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THE 0HUKCH-1DEA 



ESSAY TOWABDS UNIT1 



WILLIAM REED HUNTINGTON 



RECTOR OF ALL-SAINTS WORCESTER 



'CHRISTO ET ECCLESI^" 

Legend of the third Seal of llarcurd CoUeye 




fE. P. mjTTGN AN? (fi&PASY 

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THE CHURCH-IDEA 



AN 



ESSAY TOWABDS UNITY 



WILLIAM EEED HUNTINGTON 



HECTOR OF ALL-SAINTS WORCESTER 



♦CHRISTO ET ECCLESI^" 

Legend of the third Seal of Harvard College 



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PREFATORY NOTE. 



The following papers contain some things 
which in a purely theological treatise would be 
superfluous. But clergymen are not the only 
public the writer has had in mind. There is, 
in America, a constantly widening circle of 
educated and thoughtful people who take a 
keen interest in such subjects as are here dis- 
cussed, but whom it would be unreasonable to 
credit with any extended knowledge either of 
Church History or of Systematic Divinity. The 
book is chiefly meant for readers of this class. 
Care has therefore been taken to free the argu- 
ment, in its main drift, alike from technicalities 
of language and obscurities of allusion. Every- 
thing of an exclusively professional interest has 
been thrown into the foot-notes, and can be 
readily avoided. 



CONTENTS. 



I. The Gospel of the Kingdom .... 9 
II. The Thought and its Clothing ... 29 

III. Romanism: the Idea Exaggerated . . 50 

IV. Puritanism: the Idea Diminished . . 75 
V. Liberalism: the Idea Distorted . . .95 

VI. The American Problem .... 118 

VII. Reconciliation 144 

Appendix 218 



THE CHURCH-IDEA. 



THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 

Dissatisfaction is the one word that 
best expresses the state of mind in which 
Christendom finds itself to-day. There is a 
wide-spread misgiving that we are on the 
eve of momentous changes. Unrest is every- 
where. We hear about Roman Councils, 
and Anglican Conferences, and Evangelical 
Alliances, about the question of the Temporal 
Power, the dissolution of Church and State, 
and many other such like things. They all 
have one meaning. The party of the Papacy 
and the party of the Reformation, the party 
of orthodoxy and the party of liberalism, are 
all alike agitated by the consciousness that a 
spirit of change is in the air. 

No wonder that many imagine themselves 
listening to the rumbling of the chariot- 
wheels of the Son of Man. He Himself 



10 THE CHUECH-IDEA. 

predicted that " perplexity " should be one 
of the signs of His coming, and it is certain 
that the threads of the social order have 
seldom been more seriously entangled than 
they now are. 

A calmer and perhaps truer inference is 
that we are about entering upon a new reach 
of Church history, and that the dissatisfaction 
and perplexity are only transient. There is 
always a tumult of waves at the meeting of 
the waters : but when the streams have 
mingled, the flow is smooth and still again. 
The plash and gurgle that we hear may mean 
something like this. 

At all events the time is opportune for a 
discussion of the Church-Idea ; for it is with 
this, hidden under a hundred disguises, that 
the world's thoughts are busy. Men have 
become possessed with an unwonted longing 
for unity, and yet they are aware that they 
do not grapple successfully with the practical 
problem. Somehow they are grown per- 
suaded that union is God's work, and sep- 
aration devil's work : but the persuasion only 
breeds the greater discontent. That is what 
lies at the root of our unquietness. There 
is a felt want and a felt inability to meet the 
want ; and where these two things coexist 
there must be heat of friction. 



THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 11 

Catholicity is what we are reaching after, 
but how is Catholicity to be defined ? and 
when we have got our definition, what are 
we to do with it ? The speculative and the 
practical sides of the question are about 
equally difficult to meet. The men of the 
" Counter Council " at Naples, and the Boston 
" Free Religionists " are, in their way, as zeal- 
ous for Catholicity as the Conclave of Car- 
dinals ; but how differently they understand 
the term ! The humanitarian scheme would 
make the Church conterminous with the 
race ; the ultramontane would bound it by 
the Papal decrees. 

Clearly we have come upon a time for the 
study of first principles, a time to go down 
and look after the foundations upon wdiich 
our customary beliefs are built. The more 
searching the analysis, the more lasting will 
the synthesis be sure to be. 

The present papers presuppose in the 
reader a certain amount of Christian faith, 
enough, at least, to give him a general in- 
terest in the subject under review. They 
do not, however, take for granted any def- 
inite conclusions as to the nature or intent 
of the Christian Church. We will begin, 
therefore, at the beginning, with the Church- 
Idea itself. 



12 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

And first of all this very expression must 
be justified. What is the Church-Idea ? 

Briefly it is this, that the Son of God came 
down from heaven to be the Saviour not 
only of men, but of man ; to bring " good 
tidings of great joy " not only to every 
separate soul, but also to all souls collectively. 
He died, not only to save the scattered sheep, 
but to gather them that they might be scat- 
tered sheep no longer. If we would receive 
the Gospel in its fulness, we must recognize 
it as a message endowed with a twofold 
significance, sent with a twofold purpose, 
freighted with a twofold blessing. 

Not that there are two Gospels — God 
forbid ! St. Paul would have his Galatians 
hold accursed even the angel who shall dare 
to preach to them a second Gospel. But this 
single Gospel has a twofold outlook ; in the 
one direction it fronts upon the individual, 
in the other it fronts upon society. 1 

Every man that breathes has his own 
personal need of pardon at God's hands. 

1 The Schoolmen wisely recognized this distinction in 
their theory of " The Seven Sacraments." Two of the seven, 
namely, Matrimony and Orders, were held to confer grace on 
society, as the other five conferred it on the individual. 
It cannot be denied that a profound truth is latent here. See 
Bishop Hampden's The Scholastic Philosophy, Bampton Lec- 
tures for 1832, p. 313. 



THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 13 

The Gospel meets him with its promise of 
forgiveness. Again, the great family of 
men, as a family, asks to be reconciled and 
set in order. The Gospel meets this want 
with its announcement of a Kingdom organ- 
ized upon the principle of holiness. 

" The Gospel " ought to be regarded as 
the entire blessing resulting to the world 
from the birth, life, death, resurrection, and 
ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. In this 
aggregate of blessing, the interests both of the 
one and of the many have a place. It is an 
injury to the balance of truth when either 
aspect is dwelt upon to the exclusion of the 
other. Many a weary estrangement in re- 
ligion owes its origin to this mistake. If, in 
a rough way, we define the error of Roman- 
ism to be an overestimate of the value of 
organized Christianity, we ought also to admit 
that the error of Protestantism has lain in an 
underestimate of the same. The one the- 
ology tends to sacrifice the individual to the 
Church ; the other tends to sacrifice the 
Church to the individual. 

But we shall come to " the Roman Ques- 
tion " by and by. At present we are con- 
cerned with the abstract Church-Idea, and in 
determining whether it has, or has not, any 
intimate relation with the Gospel of Christ. 



14 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

A glance at the very first instance in which 
the word " Gospel" occurs in the New Tes- 
tament will give us light upon this point. 
The Evangelist St. Matthew tells us, in one 
of his earlier chapters, that as soon as our 
Lord's ministry was fairly begun, He " went 
about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues, 
and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom." 1 
Now we know what " Gospel " means, and 
we know what " Kingdom " means. Gospel 
is good news. A kingdom is one of the 
familiar forms of organized society. When, 
therefore, we are told that Jesus preached 
" the Gospel of the Kingdom," the natural 
and straightforward inference from the state- 
ment would seem to be that He announced 
to the people the coming of a new and better 
social order. It will be remembered that 
this had been the key-note also of the Bap- 
tist's cry in the desert. He had bidden men 
repent and be ready, because there was a 
kingdom close at hand. When the King 
came, His first utterance was but the ampli- 
fication of what His harbinger had said. He 
also preached " the Gospel of the Kingdom." 

But we are not left wholly to our own 
devices in searching out the meaning of this 

i Matt. iv. 23. 



THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 15 

phrase. We have even better evidence than 
that of the ordinary laws of language. The 
discourses spoken in those Galilean synagogues 
and elsewhere on mountain, lake, &nd plain, 
are largely preserved to us. In sermon and 
parable we have the outline of the new 
Kingdom sketched, and so sketched as to 
persuade us that it is meant to be a thing 
very tangible and real. The impression 
given is that of a new society about to be 
established here on earth, a regenerate social 
order that shall dwell within the older order, 
while yet wholly independent of it, the one 
community bearing to the other the relation 
that the embryo butterfly sustains to the 
larva it inhabits. There is to be brought in 
among the kingdoms of this w T orld a Divine 
polity fruitful of change and sure of triumph ; 
a polity that shall fulfill the promise of the 
Magnificat, putting down the mighty from 
their seats, exalting them of low degree ; fill- 
ing the hungry with good things, and send- 
ing the rich empty away. 

But how does all this square with the or- 
dinary definitions of " the Gospel ? " To the 
question, What is the Gospel ? the usual an- 
swer would be something like this : " The 
Gospel is the blessed promise of pardon 



16 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

through the blood of Christ. It is the assur- 
ance that for me the Saviour died." A true 
answer, doubtless ; but is it the whole truth ? 
Can it be the whole truth ? Is this the Gos- 
pel that was preached by Jesus Christ in His 
own person? 

Manifestly if the benefits of Christ's death 
were preached by Him while He was yet 
treading the soil of Palestine and before He 
suffered, they must have been preached pro- 
phetically. But do we find this to have 
been the case ? Do we discover in His re- 
corded discourses very plentiful allusions to 
the Preacher's coming sacrifice of Himself? 
We certainly do find mysterious hints of 
what is to be wrought upon the Cross. Cal- 
vary looms heavily as we approach the close 
of the Gospel story. But do we find in the 
reported sayings of our Lord anything like 
the same prominence given to the distinctive 
doctrine of His sacrificial death that we find 
in the writings of the Apostles ? Waiving 
for the moment those intimations and fore- 
shado wings of a truth more fully to be re- 
vealed, do we discover among the words of 
Jesus any such plain, direct statement as 
this, for example, " The blood of Jesus Christ, 
His Son, cleanseth us from all sin?" No 



THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 17 

one, whatever his theological bias, will assert 
that we do. And yet " the Gospel " was 
preached even while 

<; The Word had flesh, and wrought 
With human hands the creed of creeds." 

The Gospel was preached then, for we are 
expressly told that it was, and it was Jesus 
Christ Himself who preached it. He, if any 
one, must have known what the Gospel 
meant. And how did He preach the Gos- 
pel ? The Evangelists tell us. Their record 
makes it plain, that, from the beginning of 
His preaching and teaching, Jesus presented 
His Gospel in the twofold aspect that has 
been claimed for it. He taught the duty of 
personal allegiance to Himself. " Follow 
me," He said. That was the side of the Gos- 
pel that fronted on the individual. Again, 
He spoke repeatedly to His disciples of " the 
things pertaining to the Kingdom of God." 
That was the side of the Gospel that fronted 
upon society. 

It is to be observed that neither one of 
these two bearings was clearly discerned 
until after the Saviour's death. It was only 
when Pentecost had completed the cycle of 
the redemptive work that the " salvation 
which, at the first, began to be spoken by the 
Lord " could be either taught or received in 



18 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

its completeness. 1 The death and resurrection 
of the Gospel -bringer threw a flood of light 
upon what He had said about His kingly 
claims. Men began to see why so large a 
measure of personal loyalty was demanded of 
them, when they were shown how He who 
asked it had died to take away their sin. 
And they began to understand what was 
meant by the Gospel of a Kingdom, when 
they saw rising everywhere about them the 
walls and turrets of the new-founded City of 
God. 

It will be seen that the writer's view iden- 
tifies "the Kingdom" with the institution 
known in history as the Christian Church. 

Against such an identification of the King- 
dom with the Church, two arguments may 
be brought. The tw T o are independent of 
each other, and, to a certain extent, in con- 
flict ; but since each has found distinguished, 
as well as numerous upholders, it will be 
worth our while to examine them with care- 
fulness. 

The first of these two negative arguments 
may be compactly stated thus : Christ's King- 
dom means His spiritual supremacy in the 
hearts of His several followers. It is not, 

!See Bernard's Progress of Doctrine in Hie New Testament. 
Chap. vii. 



THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 19 

and its Founder never intended it to be, a 
visible organization. The second is this : 
Christ's Kingdom means that coming down 
of the heavenly Jerusalem to earth, which 
we are to look for when the present order 
of the world passes away. 

Of these arguments, the first supposes 
that the Kingdom has been already started 
in the world, but is invisible ; the second 
holds that the Kingdom will be visible when 
it comes, but that it has not yet come. 
There is truth in both views. There is 
Scripture in support of both. Their error 
lies in their one-sidedness. The larger doc- 
trine that is to include both must set forth 
a Kingdom at once visible and invisible, 
present and future. 

Let us first look at the argument for invisi- 
bility. It is undeniable *that the phrase 
"Kingdom of Heaven," or "Kingdom of 
God," admits of a subjective as well as an 
objective interpretation. Christ Himself says, 
" The Kingdom of Heaven is within you," 
and this word of His has been the main reli- 
ance of the "invisible" hypothesis. But, 
when we think of it, every kingdom is, in one 
sense, u within " men. The essence of a king- 
dom does not lie in thrones, and crowns, and 



20 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

sceptres, and palaces, but in the king's con- 
sciousness of rightful authority, and in the 
people's consciousness of an obligation to 
obey. The true kingdom is " within " the 
subjects' hearts. And yet, for all this, king- 
doms, as we know them, are very real and 
visible things. Granting that Christ meant 
His Kingdom to be inward, does it follow 
that He did not mean it to be outward also ? 
In such a discussion, the burden of proof 
rests upon those who deny the outward- 
ness or visibility, not upon those who af- 
firm it. 

The Apostles are commonly believed to 
have known the mind of Christ as well, at 
least, as most modern theologians, and they 
certainly could not, after Pentecost, be called 
unspiritual men ; yet these Apostles went 
forth from their -forty days of intercourse 
with the risen Lord, and built up all over 
the world a society as visible and tangible 
as it well could be. This society had its 
terms of membership, its officers, its laws, its 
sacramental observances, its rites and usages. 
Loner before the books of the New Testament 
had been gathered into a volume, the exist- 
ence of this society was as real and evident 
to the eyes of men as that of the Roman 



THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 21 

Empire itself. There was nothing shadowy 
or uncertain about it. It was actual. It had 
a name. That name was The Church. 
This point will be more fully brought out in 
another paper ; just now it is merely noted 
as a formidable fact in the way of those who 
would disprove Christ's intention of founding 
a visible Kingdom. 

The parables of our Lord hold a very 
interesting relation to this question. They 
are almost all of them concerned with the 
nature of the Kingdom of Heaven ; and it is 
a significant fact, that while some of them 
are most readily interpreted of that Kingdom 
which is " within," and some of that which 
is u without," there are yet others that admit 
with equal ease of either interpretation. 

Every student of the parables must have 
noticed this. Indeed, it is but another illus- 
tration of that law of duality which, as w T e 
have seen, runs through the whole system 
of revelation. The very fact that these 
symbolic sayings are illustrative of the Gos- 
pel, causes them to partake of the Gospel's 
twofold character. Take, for example, the 
Parable of the Mustard Seed. We may 
understand it of God's truth sown in the 
heart of the believer and growing up into 



22 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

what we call ripe character, a tree beautiful 
in foliage and vocal with the song of birds. 
Or we may understand it of the seed of the 
new social order sown in the world, and 
springing up into a tree whose branches 
reach out over all lands, and whose top 
touches the sky. Either interpretation is 
beautiful, and probably both were intended. 

The old philosophers were fond of calling 
man a microcosm, or little world in himself. 
So the Christian may be a little Kingdom' of 
Heaven in himself. But as the microcosm 
does not exclude the macrocosm, the little 
world and the great world being admirably 
adjusted to each other, so neither does this 
double aspect of the parables at all impair 
their meaning. 

The variety of limestone known as calc- 
spar crystallizes in the rhombohedral form. 
It is a peculiarity of this mineral that if you 
shatter a crystal of it by a blow of the ham- 
mer, each little fragment will be found to be 
a perfect rhombohedron in miniature. All 
that was true geometrically of the planes and 
axes and angles of the large crystal, is also 
true of the planes and axes and angles of 
the tiny one. The same scientific formula 
that described the unbroken mineral an- 



THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 23 

swers equally well for any fractured part. 
The only difference is in respect of magnitude. 
Let us interpret this parable of stone. It 
shows us that a law of spiritual proportion 
may be applicable to the individual man, 
and yet not for this reason inapplicable to 
the "colossal man," society. It indicates 
also what is the right answer to those who 
would oppose the spirituality of the Kingdom 
to its visibility, namely, this: the Kingdom 
was meant to be both spiritual and visible, 
internal and external ; a Kingdom within the 
soul, and yet a Kingdom into which both 
soul and body have the power to come. 

There remains the argument of futurity, 
as it may be called. Did Christ, in all that 
He said about the Kingdom of Heaven, 
intend to be understood as speaking of that 
perfected social state which is to ensue upon 
His coming again ? In a word, did He mean 
the heavenly state itself, that which we look 
forward to when we pray, " Thy Kingdom 
come ? " 

Again let us resort to the parables. Two 
of the most familiar of them can settle this 
point in a moment. The Kingdom of 
Heaven, Jesus tells us, is like a net cast into 
the sea, that gathers of every kind, good and 



24 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

bad. And yet of the heavenly city of the 
future, that perfectly pure and holy city, we 
are told that there cannot enter into it any- 
thing that defileth, worketh abomination, or 
maketh a lie. In another place the Kingdom 
of Heaven is likened to a field of wheat in 
which an enemy sows tares. The wheat and 
tares grow together until the harvest. And 
when is the harvest ? The harvest is " the 
end of the world." Clearly, then, the King- 
dom of Heaven, as Christ uses the words, 
must be something that begins long before 
the world ends ; otherwise how can it possi- 
bly be like a field in which wheat and tares 
grow together until the harvest? 

The right way out of the difficulty seems 
to be this. "When our Lord spoke of the 
Kingdom of Heaven, He had in mind a King- 
dom He meant to establish at once here on 
earth, but a Kingdom, nevertheless, which 
should find its fullest and ripest develop- 
ment in the world to come. He was to lay 
the foundations in time, of a building whose 
battlements and spires were to mount up 
into eternity. If this was indeed His pur- 
pose, then it is certainly an unwise spirituality 
that allows itself to speak slightingly of 
organized Christianity as the " mere visible 



THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 25 

Church." Thus contemptuously to set aside 
the Church-Idea as being no part of the 
true Gospel of Christ, but only an accidental, 
perhaps dangerous appendage, is virtually to 
make ourselves wiser than our Lord Himself. 
Let us beware of endeavoring to be more 
spiritual than He whose gift the Spirit is. 

We are sometimes warned of the great 
peril of putting the Church before Christ, or 
in the place of Christ. If by putting the 
Church before Christ be meant the worship- 
ping of forms and ceremonies, instead of the 
worshipping of Almighty God, the caution 
is not amiss. But if it be meant that the 
Gospel of the Kingdom really interferes with 
or obscures the Gospel of the Cross, then 
the warning, however well meant, is a 
mistaken one. The New Testament couples 
together the two thoughts, " Christ and the 
Church." To this agrees St. Paul. He 
confesses that the mystery is great ; " but," 
he adds, " I speak concerning Christ and the 
Church." To this agrees St. John : « The 
Spirit and the Bride say, Come." The 
Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. The Bride is 
the Church. In those high and mystic 
nuptials of which the Apostle speaks, the 
invisible and the visible are wedded. What 



26 THE CHUECH-IDEA. 

are we, that we should strive to have it other- 
wise ? ; * Those whom God hath joined to- 
gether, let no man put asunder/ 3 

Thus far we have been busy with deter- 
mining the single point whether our Lord 
Jesus Christ did, or did not mean that there 
should be built up in the world, after His 
departure, a visible and organized society 
bearing His name. Our next step will be 
to mark the manner in which the creative 
thought took shape and body in the hands 
of those who received it directly from the 
Founder. 

We shall then review successively the three 
principal misapprehensions to which, in the 
progress of human history, the original 
thought has been subject ; namely, — 

Romanism, or the Exaggeration of the 

J CO 

Divine Idea ; 

Puritanism, or the Diminution of the 
Divine Idea ; 

Liberalism, or the Distortion of the Divine 
Idea. 

Lastly, we shall confront the difficult prob- 
lem how in this strange new America of 
ours, good Christian people who sympathize 
fully with neither Romanism, Puritanism, 
nor Liberalism, but who desire to give each 



THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 27 

one of these its just due, may best be loyal 
to the Divine Idea. 

Let no one say that the inquiry is an idle 
one. Leastwise let no Christian man or 
woman say so. 

For an unbeliever to boast, " The Church 
is nothing to me," is natural enough. But 
a believer has no right to use this flippant 
tone. In him indifference is blameworthy. 
He is as much bound to feel solicitude for 
the well-being of the Church, as the good 
citizen is bound to care for the prosperity of 
the State. For a Christian to declare that 
his whole religion consists in watering and 
weeding his own spiritual garden-plot, and 
that he has no time to look beyond the hedge, 
is blank selfishness. We call the man who 
acknowledges no obligation to the community 
in which he lives, a churl. The Church is 
the commonwealth of souls, and every 
Christian owes it fealty and service. 

In following out the plan thus sketched, 
it will be the writer's aim to use perfectly 
explicit language so as to avoid being mis- 
understood. If at any time this plainness 
of speech should seem to the reader too plain, 
let him be assured that there is no intention 
of unkindness or discourtesy. The single 



28 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

purpose of these papers is to promote recon- 
ciliation and peace, a purpose which any 
least tinge of bitterness would thwart. But 
unity is to be sought through the truth ; and 
if we would reach the truth every man must 
say out honestly just what he thinks. When, 
therefore, in the course of our inquiry, dif- 
ferent systems of religion are freely criticised 
it will be understood that this is due to no 
inability or unwillingness to appreciate what 
is good in them, but is only the fruit of an 
honest desire to get at the truth. 

Any other method would be at once feeble 
and unsatisfactory. To say nothing directly, 
and to leave everything to inference, may 
be an inoffensive, as it certainly is a safe way 
of expressing thought. But what the most 
charitable of men has called " sound speech 
that cannot be condemned," is speech of an- 
other sort. It can only mean such utterance 
as is straightforward, intelligible, and to the 
point. 



THE THOUGHT AND ITS CLOTHING. 29 



II. 

THE THOUGHT AND ITS CLOTHING. 

Life, of whatever sort it is, looks for a 
lodgment in organization. Perhaps the re- 
mark ought to be limited to life as we know 
it upon this planet. What the vital conditions 
may be elsewhere, we cannot tell. Here, 
certainly, life is forever taking on shapes 
that are at once its clothing and its expres- 
sion. 

Vegetable life finds its organization in roots 
and stalks, leaves and branches, plants and 
trees. Animal life breathes itself into flesh 
and bones, and seeks a dwelling in the bodies 
of all moving creatures, in birds, beasts, and 
men. There is yet a higher kind of life 
than either the vegetable or the animal. 
We call it spiritual life, the life that differ- 
ences man from the brute. 

Now where and how does this spiritual 
life find organization ? In a partial and mea- 
gre way the question is answered whenever 
spirit and flesh are welded together in one 



'30 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

living man. But this embodiment is of ne- 
cessity incomplete. It is the incarnation of 
a spirit, rather than of spirit. We must look 
for an ampler tabernacle than the human 
frame, and we find it in that large and com- 
plicated body, society. This is the law that 
binds men together in communities, girding 
the earth with a chain armor of families, 
each link nearly or distantly connected with 
every other link. The individual is con- 
scious of incompleteness, and seeks instinct- 
ively, by joining himself to others of his 
kind, to realize that " fulness " which really 
can be gathered up in no one person save 
the Word made flesh. This, then, is the 
rationale of the Gospel of the Kingdom. 
This is the marrow of the Church-Idea. 
Because there has always been spiritual life 
in the world, therefore there has always been 
society. Because it is possible for the spirit 
of man to live either with God or apart from 
Him, therefore there has always been an 
inner or elect society, — the Church. Be- 
cause Jesus Christ brought into the world 
a vast access of spiritual life, therefore the 
new society of the elect in which this life 
has found embodiment is called, in distinc- 
tion from the national election it displaced, 
the Catholic or Universal Church. 



THE THOUGHT AND ITS CLOTHING. 31 

Now it is one thing to admit the truth of 
abstract statements like these, and quite an- 
other to discern their true bearing on the 
history of the past, and the needs of the 
present. We have undertaken to study the 
Divine idea of the Church, but the attempt 
is hopeless without the aid of some sort of 
illustration. 

Moreover, we want an illustration that 
shall carry with it the weight of authority. 
A man is at liberty' to pick and choose illus- 
trations when he is setting forth his own 
thoughts ; but when he undertakes to inter- 
pret a revealed thought of God, we demand 
that he employ similitudes stamped with the 
sanction of the Revealer. 

Our Lord provided for this necessity very 
fully when He promulgated His Gospel of 
the Kingdom. He knew well that men 
would never catch His idea unless He put 
it into pictures, and wrote His own Fecit on 
the canvas. Both He and His Apostles 
after Him took pains, therefore, to employ 
very striking comparisons as a means of ex- 
pounding the nature of the new society. 
Some of these comparisons illustrate one as- 
pect of the Divine idea, others another aspect. 

Thus the Church is likened in the New 



32 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

Testament to a field of wheat, to a fisher's 
net, to a vineyard, to a kingdom, to a ship, 
to a sheep-fold, to a family, to a bride, to a 
tree springing from a seed, to the human 
body. Of all these various similitudes, the 
last is richest in suggestion. Nothing in 
Nature is so marvelously wrought as the 
house that man inhabits, and it is no wonder 
we find it the best symbol of that Divine 
society whose Head is Christ, and whose 
many members are destined to constitute at 
last w; the perfect man." 

Besides, this illustration of the body falls 
in admirably with our present purpose, which 
is to ascertain in what way the Divine thought 
as it came from the mind of Christ took on, 
at the hands of His immediate successors, 
the clothing of actual fact. The Apostle 
with whose activity in missionary labor we 
are best acquainted, was the same whose eye 
seems to have caught most readily the re- 
semblance between the body and the Church. 
We are likely to find, therefore, that the 
analogy is as rich in practical suggestions as 
it is useful in the interpretation of ideal truth. 
Let us see. 

The first and most obvious attribute of a 
body is visibility. Undoubtedly there are 



THE THOUGHT AND ITS CLOTHING. 33 

bodies that we cannot see, — microscopic 
bodies, for example, and ethereal bodies too 
subtile for our vision ; but when we speak 
of such bodies as invisible, we really only 
mean that we have not the eyes to see 
them. Letting alone such fine-spun distinc- 
tions as this, the remark is perfectly true that 
the most obvious attribute of a body is 
visibility. It is, indeed, this very visibility 
that, in the common judgment of men, 
distinguishes body from spirit. Spirit is some- 
thing that cannot be seen ; body is something 
that can be seen. When the disciples after 
the resurrection were frightened because they 
thought they had seen a spirit, Jesus, while 
He reassured them, gently reproved their 
error of judgment. " Why are ye troubled ? 
Behold my hands and my feet that it is I 
myself. Handle me and see, for a spirit 
hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have." 1 
Here sight is made, by the highest authority, 
the criterion of the body's reality. " Handle 
me and see." It is a true body, because it 
is a visible one. 

If, then, the Church is a body, in any real 
and satisfactory sense, the Church must be a 
society that is visible, open to the eye. And 

1 Luke xxiv. 39. 
3 



34 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

what is a visible society ? It is any union of 
men that confesses itself a union by having 
terms of admission and symbols of member- 
ship. The societies called u secret " are just 
as visible as any others, so far as the evidence 
of their existence goes. The nearest ap- 
proach to an invisible society, if the very 
coupling of the two words does not involve a 
contradiction, is in the case of men banding 
together for the attainment of some object, 
and agreeing solemnly that their relation to 
each other shall not be indicated by any out- 
ward sign or token whatsoever. But we 
have a distinct name for such a union as this. 
We call it a conspiracy, or mingling of 
breaths. Yet even a breath upon a cold day 
takes form and shape such as the eye can 
see. So hard is it to disconnect the idea of 
visibility from the idea of a society. 

Why, then, do we hear so much in these 
days about " the Church Invisible ? " There 
certainly is no warrant for the phrase in Holy 
Scripture. Nowhere in the Word of God, 
from the first page of it to the last, is there 
any mention of a Church Invisible, save of 
that which is only invisible because it is in 
heaven, not on earth. We must remember 
that there is a difference between " things 



THE THOUGHT AND ITS CLOTHING. 35 

not seen " and things that cannot be seen. 
The heavenly Church is among the things 
not seen as yet, but this is not because it is a 
Church Invisible by nature. It can be seen, 
and will be seen, even as in vision it has been 
seen. Here is the picture of it. " After 
this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, 
which no man could number, of all nations, 
and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood 
before the throne, and before the Lamb, 
clothed with white robes, and palms in their 
hands ; and cried with a loud voice, saying, 
Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the 
throne, and unto the Lamb." x This is indeed 
a Church to us invisible, and it is the onlv 
" Church Invisible 4 " of which the Scriptures 
speak. 

In the previous paper the argument against 
the theory of invisibility was rested upon the 
words of Christ Himself, and the question 
of His intention was made the central point. 
A glance at the actual practice of the men 
who were commissioned by Christ to carry 
out His plan, will show whether the inference 
there drawn from the language of the King 
finds warrant in the acts of His lieutenants. 

Let us see what was St. Paul's notion of 

i Rev. vii. 9. 



36 THE CHUKCH-IDEA. 

edifying or building up that Body of Christ 
of which he said so much. 

The Apostle goes into a certain city of 
Asia Minor, or Macedonia, or the Greek 
Peninsula, and he preaches there the Gospel 
of Jesus Christ. The soil is an outworn and 
unpromising one, but into it he bravely casts 
the seed. What follows ? Some of the in- 
habitants of that city repent and believe. 
What follows next ? The Apostle satisfies 
himself of the genuineness of their repent- 
ance and faith, and he then receives those 
persons and their households into the circle 
of the Kingdom, the Fold of the Church, the 
Body of Christ. How does he do this ? He 
does it by that sacrament of Holy Baptism 
which the Lord Himself ordained as the 
door of entrance to the new society. They 
become regenerate, or new-born into the 
family of God. 

The Apostle goes away. His missionary 
errand carries him to some far-off city of the 
Mediterranean. Presently he learns, either 
by some chance comer or by a special mes- 
senger, that all is not going on well in that 
city w T here he planted the Kingdom, and left 
it to be cared for at the hands of others. 
There has been a falling away from the 



THE THOUGHT AND ITS OLOTHING. 37 

faith, or dissensions have sprung up, or gross 
sins have crept in and defiled the flock, so 
that purity of life, as well as of faith, is put 
in peril. What does the Apostle now ? He 
takes his pen, or he bids some fellow-mis- 
sionary take the pen for him, and he writes 
a letter of counsel to those far-off* Christians, 
telling them how sadly grieved he is to learn 
that anything has gone wrong, and pointing 
out in what way all may be set right again. 
But how does he address this letter ? Pause 
a moment. How should we expect him to ad- 
dress it, according to the " invisible Church " 
theory? Should we not look to find him 
drawing a sharp line of distinction at the 
very outset between those in the Church 
who had come up to his expectations, and 
those who had not ? Should we not expect 
him to state explicitly that he regards those 
who have been in fault as no Christians at 
all? Ought he not to tell these last that 
their baptism was a nullity, that events have 
proved the sacrament to have been in their 
case an empty form, and bid them reflect 
that their membership of the " mere visible 
Church " avails them nothing ? 

This is what we might very naturally ex- 
pect. But do we, in point of fact, find the 



38 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

Apostle taking this line ? We know that 
the Christians of Corinth were, at one time, 
fallen into much such a state as has been 
pictured. St. Paul wrote to them. What 
was his address ? " Paul, called to be an 
Apostle of Jesus Christ, through the will 
of God, and Sosthenes our brother, unto the 
Church of God which is at Corinth, to them 
that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to 
be saints, .... grace be unto you 
and peace." 1 The whole spirit of the letter 
is in harmony with this beginning. The 
Corinthian Christians, one and all, are dealt 
with throughout as those who had been 
sanctified, set apart to be holy, made mem- 
bers of the Body of Christ. The appeal to 
those of them who have gone astray, is made 
to rest upon this very fact that they do be- 
long, in virtue of their baptism, to the sacred 
Body of the Lord, and that they ought to be 
deeply penitent for having defiled that Body. 
" As many of you as have been baptized 
into Christ have put on Christ ; " this is the 
promise that underlies all his reasoning, the 
solemn reminder that gives weight to his 
every rebuke. Even when he is expostulat- 
ing with the offenders themselves, his argu- 

i 1 Cor. i. 1. 



THE THOUGHT AND ITS CLOTHING. 39 

ment is that they are defiling the temple of 
God, " which temple," he significantly adds, 
"ye are." Does this look as if St. Paul had 
always in mind two Churches, an outer and 
an inner, a visible and an invisible, a husk 
and a kernel ? Does it not rather look as if 
he regarded the whole body of the baptized 
as being the one Church of Christ on earth, 
a Church not without its unworthy and sickly 
members, even as the Lord had said should 
be, but still one Church, to be addressed as 
brethren, to be taught, to be guided, to be 
built up, to be ministered unto, to be led on 
in holy living, and, at last, to be judged, 
not by him, Paul, but by that One who is 
ordained to judge both them and him ? 

The mention just now made of the temple 
suggests a second point in the analogy be- 
tween the Church and the living human body. 
What is it that gives honor to this complicated 
organism of flesh, and blood, and bones, and 
nerves, and muscles we call " the body ? " 
It is the solemn fact that the body is the ap- 
pointed dwelling-place of a spirit. So long- 
as it can claim this august tenant as its own, 
the body has dignity ; but no sooner is the 
spirit fled from out it than the body begins 
to return into the crude and worthless ele- 



40 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

ments of which it is built up. Beauty and 
power alike forsake it. Only dust remains. 

Now what is it that makes the new society 
whose nature we are exploring worthy of the 
high and glorious titles given to it in Scrip- 
ture ? Doubtless it is the indwelling in this 
Body also of a Spirit. And what Spirit ? 
God the Holy Ghost. Here lies the distinc- 
tion between the Church and any other 
society whatsoever. The Church has the 
promise of its Divine Founder that He will 
be in it always. 

And only consider what the presence of a 
spirit in a body involves. It is a most mar- 
velous thing, this connection between our- 
selves and the temporary home in which we 
think and feel. The wit of man can formu- 
late the law that keeps the stars in their 
courses, but of the law that links body to 
soul, it tells us almost absolutely nothing. 
We can philosophize upon that mysterious 
union, and invent all manner of hard names 
to describe it, but we get no nearer to under- 
standing it by doing so. All that we really 
know about it is that it exists, and that it 
answers the purpose of making the body the 
servant and instrument of the soul. Thus, 
for example, you wish to express a thought 



THE THOUGHT AND ITS CLOTHING. 41 

in writing. Your will determines that your 
hand shall take the pen, dip it in ink, put it 
on the paper, form the words. But how did 
the mandate, which \vas a spiritual thing, 
find its way to the muscles of your hand ? 
And when it had reached them, how did it 
compel obedience ? You answer, " By the 
power of volition." Yes, but are you any 
nearer to understanding the thing, because 
you have the phrase that describes it at your 
tongue's end? Not one whit. 

And if we cannot understand how the 
spirit impels the body to action, neither do 
we know any better why it is that an injury 
done to the body brings grief and anguish to 
the spirit. By what strange electricity the 
nerves of feeling are empowered to carry to 
the soul their nimble messages of warning, 
and, as it were, bring down the spirit to the 
suffering part, who can comprehend ? We 
only know that thus it is. The ancients used 
to say, The soul is all in every part. We 
moderns have not got beyond the paradox. 

It is impossible to appreciate the wealth 
of St. Paul's illustration unless we take into 
account this omnipresence of the spirit in the 
body. Let the reader summon up to his 
mind the image of a vast society of living 



42 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

men, all animated, actuated, and controlled 
by one central spirit. Let him imagine that 
spirit sending out commands to every remotest 
point of the complex organism, just as a 
human will telegraphs its orders to hand or 
foot, to eye or lip. Let him imagine again 
that spirit receiving intelligence from all these 
various members, learning of their necessities, 
knowing when they suffer, sorrowing, as it 
were, with their sorrow, rejoicing in their 
joy. " Now the Lord is that Spirit : " His 
body is the Church. His going forth upon 
the nerves of motion we call " grace.' ' Our 
coming to Him upon the return nerves of 
feeling we call " prayer." What a marvel- 
ous similitude it is ! How can we enough 
adore the wisdom that has thus made the 
seen things the mirror of the unseen ; our 
perishable and earthly frame the type of that 
Body Mystical which is the dwelling-place 
of Christ ! 

A third important point in this analogy is 
that which bears upon the question of the 
Church's unity. That the Church ought to 
be visibly, as well as spiritually one, is a 
direct corollarv from the two truths alreadv 
brought out. It is wonderful that even the 
usages of common speech do not teach people 



THE THOUGHT AND ITS CLOTHING. 43 

to see more clearly the connection between 
life and unity. Thus, for instance, while a 
man is living, we say that he is one person, 
but after he is dead, we speak of his " re- 
mains. '" Why this change of number from the 
singular to the plural ? It is because a body, 
taken by itself, suggests manifoldness of parts ; 
and when the tenant whose presence brought 
all things into unity has. fled, the characteristic 
which was before subordinate, becomes con- 
spicuous. Similarly we make " dissolution " 
a synonym of death ; and what is dissolution 
but a sundering into parts of that which before 
was whole ? Are those who maintain that 
the competition of sects makes the life of the 
Church, aware that what they advocate is 
really nothing less than the dissolution of the 
Body of Christ ? Indeed, is it not something 
worse than dissolution ? The demoniac who 
had Legion for his guest would probably have 
chosen death as a relief; and yet the only 
way by which sectarianism can escape the 
charge of crucifying the Lord afresh, is by 
taking refuge in the idea of a Body multitudi- 
nously possessed. An alternative more awful 
it would be hard to name. 

We are assured that there must be " diver- 
sities of operation,' 1 and hence sects. By all 



44 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

means let us admit the first proposition. By 
no means let us consent to the inference. Di- 
versity is perfectly consistent with oneness ; 
sectarianism not at all. Nature is running 
over with variety, but it is a variety in unity, 
a diversity that is absolutely obedient to law. 
That the modern interpretation of the phrase 
just quoted would have been wholly alien to 
the mind of its author, is evident from the per- 
emptory way in which we find him dealing 
with the sectarian principle in his own times. 
He does not seem to have regarded the Cephas 
party and the Ap olios party as harmless " diver- 
sities of operation," in which the Corinthian 
Church might safely be indulged. On the con- 
trary he did not hesitate to say that such divis- 
ions savored more of worldliness than of god- 
liness. No, this theory that the eye of the 
Almighty discerns in sectarian Christianity a 
harmony hidden from man's weaker vision is 
but a poor make-shift at best. The definition 
of unity that it implies is such a definition as 
would not be admitted for a moment in connec- 
tion with any of those forms of community-life 
most familiar to us. Who, for instance, would 
dream of organizing a commonwealth, an uni- 
versity, an army, or a navy, upon this princi- 
ple that outward and visible unity need not 



THE THOUGHT AND ITS CLOTHING. 45 

be considered as particularly important ? 
And if, the higher we rise in the develop- 
ment of social life, the more we feel the need 
of a perfect order, why should we imagine that 
in the structure of the ideal community, the 
Church, this point may be safely disregarded ? 

But these are questions that properly belong 
to a later stage of our inquiry. At present 
they are only noted in their connection with 
the argument from analogy. If the Church 
be a living body, unity belongs to it of right. 

One more resemblance. In every human 
body that lives and breathes there goes for- 
ward a process of ceaseless change. The 
vital energies are constantly engaged in dis- 
carding old material, and assimilating new. 
The atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and 
nitrogen, that have done their work, go on 
their way to build up other bodies, and fresh 
atoms come in to take their place. Physiolo- 
gists have not decided what precise period of 
time is required for an entire change of fleshly 
clothing ; but that such a change does take 
place many times over in the course of an 
ordinary life, they are agreed. The identity 
of a man's body is, therefore, something quite 
different from that of a marble statue, 1 for it 

1 Much confusion of thought with regard to the Christian 



46 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

is an identity that must, somehow, be con- 
sistent with perpetual change. Now and 
then there come crises 1 in the history of a 
body. We call them diseases. They may 
leave the man in a better condition than they 
found him, or they may leave him in a worse. 
They may alter his outward appearance for 
the remainder of his life, or, again, they may 
alter it only temporarily. In either case, and 
in any case, a man's body, so long as he in- 
habits it, remains his body still. 

The bearing of these facts upon the phe- 
nomena of Church life is important. We talk 
about Reformations of the Church, and argue 
whether they are desirable or not. Reforma- 
tions ! Why, the whole life of the Church 
ought to be- a continual Reformation, a con- 
stant taking out of the way that which is 
effete, and re-forming the tissue with new 
material. Those who fancy that in order to 
demonstrate the identity of the Church they 
must import into the nineteenth century the 
cultus of the thirteenth are under a delusion. 
As well refuse to own your friend because his 

doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body would be avoided, if 
this distinction between two sorts of identity, — identity of 
material and identity of growth, — were always kept in mind. 
1 M. Comte was fond of speaking of his attacks of fever 
under this name. 



THE THOUGHT AND ITS CLOTHING. 47 

countenance at forty is not what it was at 
twenty-five, as turn suspicious of the Church 
of your fathers because it does not look to 
you precisely as it looked to them. Provided 
the historical continuity of the Church be 
kept, and the original deposit of faith pre- 
served intact, it matters not how many ref- 
ormations are experienced. An unintermit- 
ting reformation would be the best of all. 

Thus we gather from this analogy of the 
Body no less than four notes, or characteristics 
of the perfect Church : — 

1st. Visibility. 

2d. The indwelling Spirit of the Lord. 

3d. Unity. 

4th. Capability of perpetual renewal. 

But how has it fared with this Divine idea 
in the actual history of the world ? This is a 
question upon which we have yet to enter. 
We must approach it prepared for some 
measure of disappointment, and even of 
mortification. 

Every one is familiar w r ith the distinction 
between an idea and its realization. A man 
conceives some grand and noble thought, and 
he attempts to give expression to it, but he 
invariably fails. What we call works of art 
are but the forms or shapes into which men 



48 THE CHUKCH-IDEA. 

have cast their various thoughts and imagin- 
ings. The one word written upon them all 
is Imperfection. 

No matter what the work is, be it a picture, 
a poem, a statue, a building, a machine, an ora- 
torio, — the maker of it will be the first to ac- 
knowledge, if he be an artist indeed, that that 
which seems so perfect in the eyes of others, 
does, in his own, fall short of what he can im- 
agine. Between a high idea and man's embod- 
iment of it there is always a great gulf fixed. 

It is told of the famous Danish sculptor, 
that in later life he was once found in his 
studio laboring under deep dejection. He 
gave it as the cause of his melancholy that he 
had just completed a work that satisfied him. 
" My powers must be on the decline," he 
added, " when I find that I am contented 
with anything that I accomplish." This 
must always be the confession of honest 
human endeavor. Our best achievements 
lag behind our visions of what might be. 

The history of the Church of Christ is but 
the record of a long and painful effort to 
clothe in actual fact the Divine idea of a 
heavenly kingdom upon earth. But in this, 
as in all else with which man has to do, the 
result has been lamentably imperfect. 



THE THOUGHT AND ITS CLOTHING. 49 

Is it objected that such an admission is in- 
consistent with what has been said about the 
Divine origin of the Church-Idea ? Not at all. 
The Divine thought, it is true, must be per- 
fect for the very reason that it is Divine. But 
the working out of the thought has been left 
to a great degree, in the hands of men. Part 
of the purpose was that in this building of the 
Temple we should be " laborers together with 
God." God's share in the work has indeed 
been perfect ; ours very far from perfect. 
This is why it was said that we should find 
cause for mortification ; for is anything more 
mortifying, when we have the picture of what 
might be, and of what was meant to be, before 
our eyes, than to observe in what a sad and 
terrible way human willfulness, and human 
pride, and human enmity, have marred and 
disfigured in the fulfilment the fair beauty of 
the promise ? 

And yet, along with our mortification, we 
shall feel gratitude and joy, if we discover 
that, after all, the lines of the original painting 
are still traceable upon the stained and torn 
canvas, and that underneath the incrustations 
of long ages there lies the pure and perfect 
outline of the Mystical Body of the Lord. 
4 



50 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

III. 

ROMANISM: THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 1 

In one of his latest addresses to the pilgrim 
Israelites, Moses made a point of warning 
them against the temptation to tamper with 
the Law they had received. " Ye shall not 
add," he said, u unto the word that I com- 
mand you, neither shall ye diminish aught 
from it." The people understood that their 
Leader claimed this perfectness for his Law 
solely on the ground of its having come from 
God. Their acquiescence was but a con- 
fession of the general truth that God's handi- 
work cannot be bettered by man's skill. 
Thus the precept covered a principle, and a 
principle which is as true now as it was then. 
A Revelation once given is susceptible of im- 
provement at no hand save the Revealer's. 
We may use our ingenuity in interpreting 
and applying its contents ; but until it has 
been superseded by a new revelation of par- 

l The issues of the Council of the Vatican are so uncertain 
that it is folly to attempt to forecast them. In the present 
paper, therefore, the writer confines himself to the past, not 
wishing to rest any portion of his argument upon conjectural 
ground. Whatever Rome may now assert, there are some 
things she cannot retract. It is with these irreversible steps 
of hers, already taken, that the critical student is principally 
concerned. 



ROMANISM : THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 51 

amount authority, our simple duty is to guard 
it alike from increment and loss. 

In the course of our inquiry into the true 
nature of the Church of Christ, we have 
reached a point where the application of this 
principle is of the utmost importance. The 
adherents of the religious system known as 
Romanism claim for themselves that they, 
and they alone of living men, are in com- 
munion with the true Body Mystical of our 
Lord Jesus Christ. In their view, the Papal 
Church is the Catholic Church ; and if the 
Catholic Church, then the Church of the 
Apostles ; and if the Church of the Apostles, 
then the Church of Christ ; and if the Church 
of Christ, then the City of God, the Kingdom 
of Heaven upon earth, the Mother of us all. 

Grant the first proposition, and the rest 
follow. But is the first proposition true ? Do 
the cause of the Papacy and the cause of 
Catholicity indeed stand and fall together ? 
Certainly not, if it can be shown that Rome 
has overlaid with inventions of her own the 
original constitution of the Kingdom, — has 
so blotted the charter of our rights, that it is 
hard for the unskilled eye to read the w T ords 
as they were written. 

But first let it be frankly admitted that 
there is a great deal to give color to the claims 



52 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

of Rome both in the line of reasoning and 
of observation. Starting from the " Tu es 
Petrus " as her historical premise, and from 
Christ's assurance that the Paraclete should 
guide the Church into all truth as her theo- 
logical premise, Rome weaves her argument 
for authority out of a warp of realism and a 
woof of idealism. It is an argument not to 
be despised ; and those who hold a different 
view of Catholicity are bound to show how 
Rome's claims are to be met. 

The late Archbishop Whately is said to 
have once posed a whole tableful of his 
clergy by taking up the defense of Romanism, 
and calling on his guests to furnish counter- 
arguments. They were finally compelled to 
beseech him that he would confute himself. 
The spectacle must have been as pitiable as 
it was ludicrous. The men ought to have 
been, as no doubt they were, heartily ashamed 
of themselves. Had Archer Butler been at 
the dinner, at least one Irish churchman would 
have held his own against the Primate. 

The helplessness of Protestant apologists 
is often due to their having taken up an 
entirely false and mistaken line of defense. 
There are two ways of dealing with this 
question of Romanism : one is the method 



ROMANISM: THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 53 

of denunciation, the other that of calm in- 
quiry and impartial search. Every body- 
knows that the first is the more usual 
method. It is so for the simple reason that 
denunciation is always easier, and sometimes 
more effective, than argument. A zealous 
Protestant can quickly gather an armful of 
epithets from Daniel and the Apocalypse, and 
shower them without mercy upon the whole 
Roman communion. Thus we not seldom 
hear the Pope called unhesitatingly Anti- 
christ or the Man of Sin. The learning of 
Roman Catholic theologians and the piety 
of Roman Catholic devotees are spoken of 
with similar contempt. The one is repre- 
sented to be the mere offspring of credulity ; 
the other, if it be not hypocrisy, is plainly the 
base lust of reward. Whatever looks like 
goodness in a Romanist is, we are assured, 
nothing more than a spurious imitation of 
the reality. No holiness is genuine that is 
not also Protestant. This method of com- 
bating the errors of Romanism may perhaps 
be justified by the law of retaliation, for Rome 
herself has not been sparing of her curses, 
but it certainly cannot be justified by the law 
of love. As disciples of Him who bade His 
followers bless and curse not, let us aim at 



54 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

the more excellent way. A sentence to carry 
weight need not be rounded with an anath- 
ema, nor can a weak argument ever be but- 
tressed with hard words. 

Besides, there is a special reason why the 
popular war-cries of " intolerance," "bigo- 
try," "priestcraft," "ambition," and the 
like should be avoided. These wholesale 
charges are as dangerous as they are vague ; 
double-edged swords, they may be made to 
cut both ways. No doubt Romanism, in the 
day of her power, was fiercely intolerant. But 
has Protestantism, in her day, never been in- 
tolerant ? We need not go beyond the limits 
of New England for an answer. The truth 
is, majorities are almost always intolerant. 
Romanists, in this matter, are only like other 
men. When they are w T eak, they advocate 
tolerance. When they are strong, they are 
tempted to intolerance. And so with the 
other charges of bigotry, priestcraft, and am- 
bition. If individual Romanists are bigoted, 
crafty, and ambitious, so are also individual 
Protestants the same. And if individual 
Protestants are large-hearted, honest, and of 
lowly mind, so are also individual Romanists 
the same. 

You draw your dark picture of the bigot, of 



KOMANISM : THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 55 

Alva, of Loyola, of Pole. The Romanist con- 
fronts you with F^nelon, with Pascal, with 
Montalembert. You hold up some perfidious 
Jesuit to contempt. The Romanist reminds 
you of those heroic missionaries who were 
among the first martyrs to Christ here in our 
own America. You talk about ambition. 
Your adversary points to the divisions among 
Protestants, and asks tauntingly, Who are the 
more ambitious, they who are ready to sac- 
rifice their personal preferences to the com- 
mon welfare, or they w T ho will rend the sacred 
Body of Christ rather than not see their own 
pet scheme triumphant ? 

It is probably true that the tendency of 
Romanism, as a system, is to beget and foster 
intolerance, bigotry, priestcraft, and ambition. 
The writer does not dispute the point ; but he 
declines, in an inquiry like this, to press these 
charges, for the simple reason that they are 
such as may be bandied to and fro forever. 
For the purposes of argument they are vague 
and inconclusive as compared with the more 
important accusation to which we are about 
to turn. Passing them all by, therefore, let 
us rest the argument against Rome upon the 
simple fact that she has added to the faith. 
This is the one charge from which that 



56 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

Church has never cleared herself, the weighty 
charge of having imposed upon the flock of 
Christ both usages and doctrines of which the 
Chief Shepherd never knew. That she has 
been untrue to the pure Gospel that was of 
old intrusted to the faithful, is her crime. 

But how are we to ascertain what this pure 
Gospel was ? That it had an existence is very 
certain. Evidently, to the Apostles' thinking, 
there could be no greater treason against 
Christ than to supplement or alter the sacred 
deposit left in the keeping of the Church, " the 
faith once delivered to the saints." 

The only trustworthy information we pos- 
sess with regard to this original deposit comes 
from the Christian Scriptures. Apart from all 
arguments about inspiration, it is indisputable 
that these waitings furnish the sole authentic 
record of what Jesus Christ Himself said and 
taught, and what the men who were under 
His immediate guidance said and taught after 
Him. Of course the oral teaching of the 
Apostles preceded their written instructions, 
and it is here that Rome brings in her plea 
for tradition. But the best tradition can 
scarcely be compared in value with documen- 
tary evidence ; and when they are satisfied 
that they have the latter, men care little for 



ROMANISM: THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. & i 

the former. Only in so far as the oral teach- 
ing of the founders of the Church is embodied 
in the book called the New Testament, do we 
know with any certainty what it was. 

Hence it was that the Church of the Anglo- 
Saxon race planted herself, in the great 
awakening of the sixteenth century, upon 
this broad and settled principle that Holy 
Scripture is the only perfectly trustworthy 
depository of revealed truth. Here is her 
authoritative language : " Holy Scripture con- 
taineth all things necessary to salvation ; so 
that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may 
be proved thereby, is not to be required of 
any man that it should be believed as an 
article of the faith, or be thought requisite 
or necessary to salvation." x The language 
with regard to the primitive creeds is in har- 
mony with this. They are received upon the 
express ground that their statements " may 
be proved by most certain warrants of Holy 
Scripture." 2 

Here we touch the heart of the question. 
Rome is arraigned upon the charge of having 
imposed upon the faithful, as essential to salva- 
tion, articles of belief that cannot possibly be 
proved by Holy Scripture. Is this charge true ? 

1 XXXIX Articles, Art. vi. 2 ibid. Art. viii. 



58 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

There is a distinction drawn by Roman 
theologians between what they call " pious 
opinions " and the actual articles of the faith. 
Readers of recent controversy have been 
made very familiar with this distinction ; but 
others may ask for an explanation. A " pious 
opinion," then, is a belief that may be very 
generally entertained among the faithful, 
while yet it lacks the official seal of the 
Church's authority. Such an opinion may, 
at a given time, be exerting far more influ- 
ence over the minds and hearts of the people 
than any one of the accredited articles of 
faith, but so long as it is not defined as 
dogma, it is an " opinion " still ; it may be 
reckoned a virtue to receive it, but it is not 
counted a sin to doubt it, nor a mortal sin to 
reject it. Many of the superstitious notions 
for which the Roman Church is popularly 
held accountable, really belong to the class 
of pious opinions. No skilled confessor would 
ever allow an educated Protestant to make 
these a barrier to his conversion. Nothing 
is easier than to see in them merely the moss 
and ivy that soften the outline of an ancient 
minster wall. 

If the additions Rome has made to the pure 
faith of the Church were nothing more than 



ROMANISM : THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 59 

" pious opinions," the law of Christian charity 
would perhaps demand that we should look 
upon them indulgently, and not regard them 
as an insuperable bar to peace. But those 
additions of which most serious # complaint is 
made, are not held by Rome as ** pious -opin- 
ions," they are taught as dogma, and have 
the full sanction of that Church's authority. 
Our own times have witnessed the actual 
transformation by a Papal mandate of what 
was, twenty years ago, a " pious opinion," 
into an article of the faith, essential to salva- 
tion. 1 

In the year 1849 the present Pope wrote 
to the Bishops of the Roman communion 
throughout the world, asking them severally 
whether in their judgment the right time had 
come to define as dogma the " pious opinion " 
that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived 
without stain of original sin. To this circular 
very many of the most learned and devout 
among the Bishops replied in the language of 

1 AVell may "Janus" say, in speaking of the possible defi- 
nition of a " Dogma of the Assumption," " If this floating tra- 
dition, too, is made into a dogma, under Jesuit inspiration, it 
may easily be foreseen that the Order — Vappetit merit en 
mangeant — will bestow many a jewel hereafter on the dogma- 
thirsting world out of the rich treasures of its traditions and 
pet theological doctrines." — The Pope and the Council, p. 35. 



60 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

respectful remonstrance. Some did not reply 
at all. The answers returned were collected 
and printed, and the copious extracts from 
them given in a note to Dr. Pusey's 
" Eirenicon " * make the most interesting 
feature of that learned work. 

1 The Eirenicon, as an Eirenicon, has conspicuously failed. 
That was a witty saying of the keen-eyed critic of the Oratory, 
that if his old friend had meant peace, he ought not to have 
" discharged his olive-branch from a catapult." And so, it 
would seem, the issue proves. The "union movement," 
frozen to death by the coldness of the Vatican, is now only an 
object of derision ; and the Eirenicon, after having demon- 
strated by its contents the impossibility of union upon an Ultra- 
montane basis, now serves to illustrate by its history the hope- 
lessness of union upon a Gallican basis. Viewed in this light, 
the book has a value that is permanent. Those who are hoping 
against hope that Rome may yet be persuaded to recognize 
Anglican Orders, and consent to a capitulation in place of un- 
conditional surrender, will do well to ponder the following 
utterance of Henry Edward, Archbishop of Westminster : 
" They who teach that the Anglican separation and the Greek 
schism are parts of the Catholic Church, violate a dogma of 
faith, destroy the boundaries of truth and falsehood, and make 
the blind to wander out of his way." — Manning's England and 
Christendom, p. 63. This is fortified in the appendix to the 
book quoted by the following official declaration: — 

" From our letters of Sept. 16, 1864, and Nov. 8, 1865, it is 
clearly and openly manifest that.no one can belong to the true 
Church of Christ unless he firmly adhere by free subjection 
of mind and heart and open confession of the lips to the chair 
of Peter and the Roman Pontiff, who has been divinely con- 
stituted by Christ our Lord Himself as successor of Peter, 
Head of His whole Church, the centre of unity, and Pastor 
with supreme power of feeding both lambs and sheep. God 
grant it, venerable brothers, that these unhappy wanderers 



ROMANISM : THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 61 

The reserved and guarded style of many 
of the communications is very curious. It is 
a significant fact that of the twenty-eight 
Roman Bishops then resident in the United 
States, only one, and he the occupant of a 
comparatively unimportant see, sent any 
answer at all. 

Of the Bishops and Archbishops of France, 
only a bare majority expressed themselves in 
favor of promulgating the proposed decree. 
A large number of the German Bishops ad- 
vised against it. But the almost perfect 
unanimity of the Italian, Spanish, and Irish 
ecclesiastics carried the day, and in the year 
1854 a decree went forth from the Papal 
chair, authoritatively assigning to the human 
mother of our Lord an attribute which Holy 
Scripture gives only to Jesus Christ Him- 
self. 1 

may abjure their errors, and see the light of Catholic truth, 
and hasten to the only Fold of Christ. And this we do not 
omit day and night to ask, in humble and fervent prayer, 
from the Father of Mercies ; and for this we again and again 
implore the powerful patronage of the Immaculate and Most 
Holy Virgin Mary, the Mother of God." — Epist. & D. N. Pit. 
P. IX. ad Episcopos Anglice. 

1 The following from Bishop Coxe's Italian letter to Pius IX. 
is not without its force: "You know, besides, that when a 
council truly oecumenical assembles, its first duty will be to 
bring a process against you, under the accusation of your 
equals, the patriarchs of the East, published to the entire 



62 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

We are the more struck by the boldness, 
some would say the effrontery, of this deliber- 
ate addition to the faith of the Church, for the 
reason that it has taken place so recently; 
but in reality we ought to be equally sensitive 
to all violations of the principle that a revela- 
tion cannot be mended by man's wit. An 
English theologian has depicted in a most 
striking way the gradual process by which, 
through neglect of this principle, modern 
error has become mixed up with primitive 

Christian world. They accuse you of grave heresies — that 
is, of having taught from your papal chair, and of having im- 
posed on your followers as " dejide " a fable about the blessed 
Deipara, which appears to have had for its sole author Maho- 
met. You attribute to her the special prerogative of her Divine 
Son, — that is, immaculate conception, — in which thing you 
disturb the very foundations of the faith. That this dogma is 
altogether contrary to the faith of St. Peter and of his col- 
leagues in the apostleship, and of all the Catholic Church, 
one of your own doctors, St. Bernard, declares. He called 
the first intimation of the new dogma ' simplicitas paucorum 
imperitorum, contra ecclesise ritum, prsesumpta novitas, mater 
temeritatis, soror superstitionis, filia levitatis, quam ritus eccle- 
sise nescit, non probat ratio, non commendat antiqua traditio ' 
( ; the folly of a few fools, a presumptuous novelty, contrary to 
the usage of the Church, the mother of rashness, the sister of 
superstition, the daughter of levity, which the rite of the 
Church knows nothing of, which reason does not approve, 
nor ancient tradition commend'). Your doctors are accus- 
tomed to give to St. Bernard the title of ' the last of the 
Fathers ; ' whence, if St. Bernard had no other knowledge of 
this dogma, it ought certainly to be unknown to the Fathers 
before him." — Mills' Translation. 



ROMANISM: THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 63 

truth. The illustration is so perfect that no 
apology need be made for quoting it at 
length. 

" Let the whole body of dogmatic truth " 
(and by this expression is meant all that is 
authoritatively taught as de fide by any 
recognized body of Christians) " be con- 
sidered together. Whatever we may think 
of the doctrine, let us view the whole as one 
stream ; then let us trace it backward to its 
fountain-head, and see what happens. The 
process is the same as tracing a river to its 
source. We wish to know whence it derives 
its waters ; we therefore trace it carefully up 
the stream, and note where every branch 
separates, to the right hand, or to the left. 
No stream that falls in anywhere along the 
course can form any part of the original 
waters ; we therefore let it alone, and steadily 
pursue the central current, till we reach the 
spot where it flows out of the broad lake or 
the precipitous mountain-side. 9 ' 

" Let us do the same thing with the dog- 
matic teaching of the Church ; we shall then 
see which branch traces its origin furthest 
back, and forms part of the parent stream. 
We scarcely commence the process before 
one doctrine is separated from the mass and 



64 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

falls behind us. The dogma of the immacu- 
late conception of the Virgin Mary reaches 
no farther back than our own memories. 
Steadily tracing the course of time back- 
wards, the dogma of purgatorial fire branches 
off about the middle of the sixteenth century, 
and dies away as a formal doctrine about the 
middle of the twelfth. In the early part of the 
fifteenth century the mutilation of the sacra- 
ment of the Lord's Supper, by taking away the 
cup from the laity, disappears. A little further 
back, at the beginning of the thirteenth cen- 
tury, we find transubstantiation for the first 
time dogmatically taught, and in another two 
or three centuries all traces of it are lost again. 
In the twelfth century five of the seven sacra- 
ments disappear, and the two ' ordained by 
Christ Himself alone survive. In the ninth 
century the power of canonization for the first 
time falls into the stream of doctrine, although 
tendency to saint worship and to incipient 
Mariolatry reaches further backward. In 
the beginning of the sixth century the papal 
supremacy is left behind, and with it the last 
formal trace of the corrupt dogmas of the 
East and West." 

He then follows back the undivided stream 
of truth until he comes to the first century. 



EOMANISM : THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 65 

Here he pauses. Somehow, in that myste- 
rious century, the river had its earthly birth. 
" Here, for an historical certainty, the faith 

begins. This admits of no denial We 

stand, as it were, looking into the depths mys- 
terious, yawning beneath and before the eye, 
inscrutable and unfathomable, whence the 
waters spring into the daylight. Look and 
watch and wonder. What spring is capacious 
enough to have given them birth ? The 
channel itself we can see to be as human as 
ourselves, though of finer and purer soil, as 
if the ever-gushing fountains of truth close 
by had clothed it with perennial beauty and 
verdure. Whence it issues the outward eye 
cannot see. The spring is there where no 
human hand can reach, no human foot can 
tread. It lies in the unseen, not the seen. 
Stand and watch the waters. All the dear 
familiar truths are there known to us from 
our childhood, almost the very words in 
which the Church is accustomed to express 
them. How sweetly, purely, freshly, vigor- 
ously they well forth from the fountain infin- 
ite, for that fount is God." l 

In this singularly lucid figure, we have the 

i The Dogmatic Faith, The Bampton Lectures for 1867, by 
the Rev. Edward Garbett, Lect. II. 
5 



bb THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

argument against Rome stated with tremen- 
dous power. For this is what we charge upon 
her, that she has suffered to flow into the pure 
stream of God's truth tributaries that have 
defiled it. She has added to the word that 
Christ commanded. She has exaggerated 
the Divine idea. 1 

A few words as to the present aspects of 
Romanism in this country. Nowhere in 
the world, perhaps, does the Papal religion 
appear to so great advantage as here. No- 
where are its adherents more justly confi- 
dent of the future. The repulsive features of 
the system, that meet .one at every turn in 
countries where it has been long established, 
are among us so toned down and modified 
that its best points are also its salient points. 
The devotion of the people to their religion ; 

1 At a book-stall in Munich, the writer happened, last Sum- 
mer, upon a little Latin tract apparently intended for the use 
of seminary students. It bore the title, " Epitheta Mariana 
ad majorem Dei et B. Marias Virginis honorein ex Scriptura 
Sacra, Breviario Romano et Litaniis Lauretanis collecta a 
Xaverio Pfeifer philosophise professore." A careful count de- 
veloped the fact that out of the three hundred and eighty-six 
" epitheta " contained in the collection, four, and only four, to 
wit, " Ancilla Domini," "Benedicta in Mulieribus," "Gratia 
Plena," and "Virgo desponsata Joseph," were really "ex Scrip- 
tura Sacra." The rest were from the sources indicated in the 
title. This is a good illustration of the way in which Rome 
develops doctrine by "accretion," instead of by "evolution." 



ROMANISM: THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 67 

their willingness to make the heaviest personal 
sacrifice for its maintenance and advancement ; 
their universal recognition of the positive duty 
of worship ; these are telling arguments with 
men who make earnestness the only sure test 
of sincerity. It is simplejustice to the Roman- 
ists of America to acknowledge that in these 
points they set an example that ought to put 
Protestantism to the blush. 

Making all due allowance for the secondary 
motives that may have fanned their zeal, 
there yet remains a large amount of single- 
hearted devotion and self-sacrifice that we 
cannot discredit without falling into the sin 
of calling good evil, and evil good. For all 
this they have their reward. The fact that 
their Church has been, thus far, the Church 
of the poor and the unlettered, so far from 
being against them, will in the end inure to 
their advantage. The Church of Christ 
began by being the Church of the poor, and 
never is she stronger than when she is willing 
to continue the Church of the poor. 

American Romanists have their reward 
also in this, that their devoted attachment to 
their religion has had the effect of drawing 
the attention of thinking men to the historical 
and philosophical aspects of their system. 



68 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

The mistake of Protestants in this country 
has been, all along, the common one of un- 
dervaluing the resources and abilities of their 
adversary. Our religious writers and plat- 
form orators have suffered themselves (prob- 
ably out of ignorance) to speak with the 
utmost scorn of the intellectual claims of 
Romanism. Looking only at the patent fact 
that the bulk of Roman Catholics in this 
country are rude, uncultivated people, they 
have drawn the hasty inference that the 
Roman Catholic religion can only be honestly 
received by such as are rude and uncultivated, 
and they have declaimed accordingly. 

Such a view of the subject is only the 
result of a narrowed horizon. The truth is 
that Roman Catholicism has its intellectual 
as well as its popular side, and that, in some 
of its aspects, it appeals even more strongly 
to the educated than to the uneducated mind. 
Whatever influence the grandeur of historical 
associations can exert, whatever power of 
persuasion logical subtlety can carry with it, 
whatever enchantment poetry and art can 
weave around the aesthetic faculties of the 
soul, these Rome has at her disposal, and will 
use when the occasion calls. 

Our people are just becoming aware of the 



ROMANISM : THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 69 

existence of this side of the subject. It is a 
surprise to them, and one result of the sur- 
prise will be that many will pass from an un- 
due contempt for the Church of Rome into 
an undue admiration of her. 

Very few deliberately embrace Romanism 
at present, unless from honest conviction. 
But, as time goes on, we shall probably see 
a marked change in this respect. We Amer- 
icans have a constitutional bias towards the 
idolatry of success. When any enterprise 
succeeds, no matter how we may have hated 
it or opposed it in its progress, we are tempted 
to fall down and worship it simply because it 
has succeeded. 

Rome, with her increasing advantages, 
will, in the future, be very likely to secure 
the adhesion of that large class which sways 
to and fro, backwards and forwards, agreeably 
to the alternations of success. 

But let us remember that although lapse 
of time and change of fashions may make 
error respectable, they never can make error 
true. 

Even should Rome attain, during the com- 
ing generation, to that ascendency in America 
for which she so patiently labors, and after 
which she so fervently aspires, an ascendency 



70 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

than which only one other is more to be 
deplored, even then Rome would be no more 
right than she is right to-day. If she has 
indeed added, and added falsely, to the simple 
Gospel of the Kingdom, such additions will 
not be lessened nor made innocent by the 
flight of years. 

No " theory of development," 1 skillfully 
wrought as it may be, can ever prove the 
mistletoe to have been in the acorn around 
the offspring of whose womb it clings. Like 
produces and develops like, and there are 
features of Romanism for the like of which 
we search the New Testament in vain. Let 
this nation heed well the Apostolic warning, 
" Stand fast therefore in the liberty where- 
with Christ hath made us free, and be not 
entangled again in the yoke of bondage," — a 
yoke which history tells us our fathers found 
themselves not able to bear, and which it 
would be a sad folly in us their sons volun- 
tarily to assume. 

1 The careful avoidance by the Roman Catholic authorities 
of anj'thing that might look like an endorsement of Dr. 
Newman's Essay on the Development of Cliristian Doctrine, 
would seem to show that they themselves regard the weapon 
forged by their most distinguished convert a perilous one to 
use. 

Note. — In view of the strenuous effort now making to 
persuade the American people that Romanism rightly un- 



ROMANISM: THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 71 



dcrstood is the true remedy for all their social and religious 
ills, it may not be amiss to reprint side by side, as an Eng- 
lish writer has lately done, the famous challenge of old 
Bishop Jewel and the creed of Pope Pius IV. Neither the 
challenge nor the creed has ever been retracted, but both 
remain in force. Not even the rhetoric of Paulist Fathers 
can bridge the ugly chasm that is here seen to lie between 
Catholic use and Koman abuse. 
Challenge of Bishop Creed of Pope Pius IV. {imposed 



Jewel [first made at 
St. Paul's Cross, Nov. 
26, 1559 ; repeated 
March 31, 1560]. 
" If any learned men 
of all our adversaries, 
or if all the learned 
men that be alive, be 
able to bring any one 
sufficient sentence out 
of any old Catholic 
Doctor or Father, or 
out of any old General 
Council, or out of the 
Holy Scriptures of God, 
or any one example of 
the Primitive Church, 
whereby it may be clear- 
ly and plainly proved, 

" That there was any 
private mass in the 
whole world at that 
time for the space of 
six hundred years after 
Christ; or that there 
was then any commun- 
ion ministered unto the 



A. d. 1564, upon all the beneficed 
Clergy of the Roman Church}. 
"I, N., believe and profess 
with a firm faith each and all of 
the articles contained in the creed 
which the Holy Koman Church 
adopts, to wit : — 

" I believe in One God [here 
follows the 'Nicene Creed.' The 
Roman form then proceeds.] 

" I most steadfastly admit and 
embrace Apostolical and Ecclesi- 
astical Traditions and all other 
observances and constitutions of 
the same Church. 

" I also admit the Sacred Scrip- 
tures, according to that sense 
which our Holy Mother, the 
Church, has held and does hold, 
to which it belongs to judge of 
the true sense and interpretation 
of the Holy Scriptures ; neither 
will I ever take and interpret 
them but according to the unani- 
mous consent of the Fathers. 

" I also profess that there are 
truly and properly seven Sacra- 



72 



THE CHURCH-IDEA. 



people under one kind ; 
or, 

" That the people 
had their common 
prayers then in a 
strange tongue that 
they understood not; 
or, 

"That the Bishop 
of Rome was then 
called an Universal 
Bishop, or the Head of 
the Universal Church ; 
or, 

" That the people 
was then taught to 
believe that Christ's 
Body is really, sub- 
stantially, corporally, 
carnally, or naturally 
in the Sacrament ; or, 

" That His Body is 
or may be in a thou- 
sand places at one time; 
or, 

" That the Priest did 
then hold up the Sacra- 
ment over his head ; or, 

" That the people did 
then fall down and wor- 
ship it with godly hon- 
or ; or, 

" That the Sacrament 
was then, or now ought 
to be, hanged up under 
a canopy ; or, 



ments of the New Law, instituted 
by Jesus Christ our Lord, and 
necessary for the salvation of 
mankind, though not for every 
one ; to wit : Baptism, Confirma- 
tion, Eucharist, Penance, Ex- 
treme Unction, Orders, and 
Matrimony; and that they con- 
fer grace ; and that of these, 
Baptism, Confirmation, and Or- 
ders cannot be reiterated without 
sacrilege ; and I also receive and 
admit the received and approved 
ceremonies of the Catholic 
Church, used in the solemn ad- 
ministration of all the aforesaid 
Sacraments. 

" I embrace and receive all 
and every one of the things which 
have been defined and declared in 
the Holy Council of Trent, con- 
cerning original sin and justifica- 
tion. 

" I profess, likewise, that in the 
Mass there is offered to God a 
true, proper, and propitiatory 
sacrifice for the living and the 
dead ; and that in the Most Holy 
Sacrament of the Eucharist there 
are truly, really, and substantial, 
ly the body, and blood together 
with the soul and divinity, of our 
Lord Jesus Christ ; and that a 
conversion is made of the whole 
substance of the bread into the 
Body, and of the whole substance 



ROMANISM: THE IDEA EXAGGERATED. 73 



" That in the Sacra- 
ment after the words of 
consecration there re- 
maineth only the acci- 
dents and shows, with- 
out the substance of 
bread and wine ; or, 

" That the Priest then 
divided the Sacrament 
in three parts, and after- 
wards received himself 
all alone ; or, 

" That whosoever had 
said the Sacrament is 
a figure, a pledge, a to- 
ken or a remembrance 
of Christ's Body had 
therefore been judged 
for an heretic ; or, 

" That it was lawful 
then to have thirty, 
twenty, fifteen, ten, or 
five masses said in one 
church in one day ; or, 

" That images were 
then set up in the 
churches, to the intent 
that people might wor- 
ship them; or, 

" That the lay-people 
was then forbidden to 
read the Word of God 
in their own tongue — 

" If any man alive 
were able to prove any 
of these articles by any 



of the wine into the Blood, which 
conversion the Catholic Church 
calls Transubstantiation. I also 
confess that under either kind 
alone, Christ is received whole and 
entire, and a true Sacrament. 

" I constantly hold that there 
is a Purgatory, and that the souls 
therein detained are helped by the 
suffrages of the faithful. 

" Likewise that the saints reign- 
ing together with Christ, are to 
be venerated and invocated ; and 
that they offer prayers to God 
for us, and that their relics are 
to be held in veneration. 

" I most firmly assert that the 
images of Christ, of the Mother 
of God, ever Virgin, and also of 
other saints, are to be had and 
retained ; and that due honor 
and veneration are to be paid to 
them. 

"•I also affirm that the power 
of indulgences was left by Christ 
in the Church, and that the use 
of them is most wholesome to 
Christian people. 

" I acknowledge the Holy, 
Catholic, Apostolic, Roman 
Church for the Mother and 
Mistress of all Churches ; and 
I promise true obedience to the 
Bishop of Borne, Successor to St. 
Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and 
Vicar of Jesus Christ. 



74 



THE CHURCH-IDEA. 



clear or plain clause or 
sentence, either of the 
Scriptures, or of the 
old Doctors, or of any 
old General Council, or 
by any example of the 
Primitive Church ; I 
promised then that I 
would give over and 
subscribe unto him/' — 
Bishop Jewel's Works, i. 
p. 20 (ed. Parker So- 
ciety). 

From Englandyersus 
Rome: a Brief Hand- 
book of the Roman 
Catholic Controversy, 
for the use of Mem- 
bers of the English 
Church. By Henry 
Barclay Swete, M. A. 
London : Rivingtons. 

How theologians like 
the Abbe Gratry, Dr. 
Dollinger, and ts Ja- 
nus " (if he be really 
not the double of the 
Munich Professor), who 
now so vehemently op- 
pose the definition of 
the dogma of Infalli- 
bility, have reconciled 
themselves to dogmas 
which, at the time of 
promulgation, seemed 
equally " inopportune," 
is a standing puzzle to 
the Protestant mind. 



"I likewise undoubtedly re- 
ceive and profess all other things 
delivered, defined, and declared by 
the Sacred Canons and General 
Councils, and particularly by the 
Holy Synod of Trent; at the 
same time I condemn, reject, and 
anathematize all things contrary 
thereto, and all heresies which 
the Church has condemned, re- 
jected, and anathematized. 

" I, N., do at this present 
freely profess and sincerely hold 
this true Catholic faith, without 
which no one can be saved ; and 
I promise most constantly to re- 
tain and confess the same entire 
and inviolate with God's assist- 
ance, to the last breath of life, 
and I will take care, as far as in 
me lies, that it shall be held, 
taught, and preached by my sub- 
ordinates, that is to say, by those 
the care of whom shall appertain 
to me in virtue of my office. 

u And this I do promise, vow, 
and swear : so help me God, and 
these God's holy Gospels." — 
Bullarium I. torn. ii. p. 130. 



PURITANISM : THE IDEA DIMINISHED. 75 



IV. 

PURITANISM : THE IDEA DIMINISHED. 

If a handful of steel dust be mixed with 
a dozen handfuls of sand, and then a magnet 
drawn hither and thither through the heap, 
the fine metallic particles, yielding to the 
mysterious law of their nature, are drawn 
away, while the dull, unsusceptible, passion- 
less grains of flint remain. Following the 
old Hebrew usage of enforcing a spiritual 
truth by some outward parabolic act, one 
might make this simple experiment a symbol 
of what is known as the Puritan theory of 
religion. Suppose the mingled heap to rep- 
resent the human race. Forget the truth 
that this same race is a family knit together 
by its myriad bands of kinship, and look upon 
it only as a vast congeries of individuals. 
Of these individuals a certain definite number 
are salvable, and the Gospel is the magnet 
by which they are to be reached. The chil- 
dren of light feel the attraction of the cross. 
Upon the children of darkness it has no 



76 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

power save to condemn. There ensues a 
process of separation, and those who are thus 
singled out from the gross body of their fellow- 
men constitute the Church of the Redeemed. 
In characterizing this view of Christianity 
as " the Puritan theory/' the writer intends 
no disrespect to a word which many excellent 
and godly people hold in high esteem. Some 
words force themselves upon us by their very 
perspicuity. " Puritan '' and " Puritanism ' 
define with wonderful exactness the reality 
that lies behind them, and to this felicity of 
structure they owe their present use. The 
root of these significant words is pure. The 
Puritan is he who proposes to cleanse or 
make pure the Church of Christ by narrow- 
ing it to the circle of those of whose accept- 
ance with the Almighty there is perfectly 
satisfactory proof. Looking constantly in 
imagination upon the picture of the Church 
triumphant, that " glorious Church, not hav- 
ing spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, 5 ' the 
Puritan is impatient and dissatisfied because 
the actual Kingdom corresponds so poorly 
with the ideal. He is convinced that the 
fault must be wholly in the line of adminis- 
tration, in the management of the power of 
the keys. He urges continually a more 



PURITANISM : THE IDEA DIMINISHED. 77 

faithful discipline, and counts it little short 
of an impiety to call the Church the " Body 
of the Lord " so long as there is to be seen 
upon its surface any spot or stain. He loves 
better to dwell upon the thought of the " few 
chosen " than upon the thought of the " many 
called." The " little flock " means more to 
him than the " ten thousand times ten thou- 
sand, and thousands of thousands." Naturally 
to the Puritan the external unity of the 
Church appears a thing of small moment as 
compared with its internal sanctity. Better, 
he argues, separation than corruption. Let 
us make sure of purity even though we 
jeopard peace. Let us be continually cleans- 
ing the Kingdom, even at the risk of turn- 
ing it upside down. 

That this view of the nature of the Church 
of Christ has its true side, it would be use- 
less to deny. A theory which has found so 
many zealous and able advocates cannot be 
wholly wrong. The most careless reader of 
the Scriptures must have noticed how much 
prominence is given in them to the ideas of 
election and separation, the two points upon 
which the parable of the magnet turns. As 
the inquiry proceeds, full credit wall be given 
to these elements of truth, and their harmony 



78 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

with the principles of genuine Catholicity 
made plain. 

But it is one thing to admit that a system 
has truth in it, and quite another to declare 
that system true. The Puritan is undoubtedly 
right in demanding that the Church's stand- 
ard of holiness shall be kept at the highest 
mark. He is undoubtedly wrong when he 
makes admission to the Fold, or continuance 
in it, dependent upon the individual's near 
approach to this. The Church's standard is 
one of aspiration, not attainment. Content 
with nothing short of perfection, she yet, like 
her Divine Head, bears with imperfection. 
Let the harvest be gathered now, she says, 
and winnowed at the Judgment Day. Thus 
it appears that the issue is between the two 
ideas of inclusiveness and exclusiveness, com- 
prehension and selection. On the one side 
stands the Puritan demanding that the books 
be opened and the sentence given now ; 
against him are the Words of Jesus, the 
Practice of the Apostles, the Experience of 
History. 

I. The Words of Jesus. " The kingdom 
of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast 
into the sea, and gathered of every kind : 
which when it was full thev drew to shore, 



PURITANISM: THE IDEA DIMINISHED. 79 

and sat down, and gathered the good into 
vessels, but cast the bad away. So shall it 
be at the end of the w r orld." Had Christ 
said not] ling else about the nature of His 
Church, this in itself would be decisive. 
The parable cannot possibly be interpreted 
of the Kingdom of Heaven that is within us, 
for there is an evident distinction made in it 
between individuals good and bad. It can- 
not possibly be interpreted of the Kingdom 
of Heaven that is to come when the kingdoms 
of this world shall have passed away, for then 
how should we explain the reference to the 
Judgment ? There is but one straightforward 
and honest way of dealing with the words, 
and that is to apply them to the Church on 
earth. Christ means to teach us that in His 
present Kingdom there must of necessity be 
a mingling of the holy and the unholy, the 
worthy and the worthless. When the net is 
full, the good are to be severed from the bad. 
When the election is complete, the selection 
is to begin. 

The College of the Apostles, which was 
the embryo Church, had from the beginning 
this mingled character. The Son of Man 
knew what was in man, and yet of the twelve 
whom He called to Himself to be His espe- 



80 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

cial body-guard, one was a pronounced traitor, 
another sacrificed fealty to fear, another said, 
" Except I shall see in His hands the print 
of the nails, I will not believe." Treachery, 
timidity, and doubt all had their represent- 
atives even in that little band to whom the 
King intrusted the fortunes of His realm. 

It would seem, then, that in so far as we 
can know the mind of Christ, by observing 
what He said and what He did, we are bound 
to believe that He intended. His Church to 
rest upon the inclusive and comprehensive 
principle rather than the opposite. If this 
be so, there is not only no unfairness, there 
is great propriety, in defining Puritanism as a 
Diminution of the Divine Idea. Rome adds 
a cubit to the stature of the Body Mystical 
of Christ, and thus hurts it by excess. But 
it is quite as possible to mar that faultless 
form by belittling its majesty. The " perfect 
man " to whom St. Paul likens the united 
and developed Church is neither a giant nor 
a dwarf. Addition and subtraction are alike 
fatal to the Gospel's symmetry. The one 
error gives us grossness ; the other, insignifi- 
cance. 

II. The Practice of the Apostles. During 
the forty days that intervened between our 



PURITANISM: THE IDEA DIMINISHED. 81 

Lord's Rising from the Dead and His Ascen- 
sion, the disciples, we are told, received from 
Him instruction in " the things pertaining to 
the kingdom of God." Our only means of 
ascertaining the purport of that mysterious 
tuition, is to observe in what way the Apos- 
tles went to work after they had received it. 
The signal value of the Book of Acts lies in 
the fact that there we have recorded this 
very thing, namely, what the Apostles did. 
Thus it would seem that this second branch 
of our inquiry is really but another form of 
the first. We are still looking to the words 
of Jesus for our authority, only we read them 
as translated into actual fact by the hands 
of those to whom they were committed. In 
brief, granting that our Lord gave to His 
infant kingdom a definite charter or con- 
stitution, there can be no safer guide to the 
interpretation of it than Apostolic practice. 

The question, then, is this : Did the Apos- 
tles administer the Church upon the Puritan 
principle, or did they not ? 

Undoubtedly in so far as Puritanism is 
synonymous with unusual strictness of life 
and simplicity of manners, the Twelve were 
Puritans. The image of holiness they held 
up was without fleck or blemish. They de- 



82 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

sired the Church to mirror this image in its 
perfectness. But did they seek the fruition 
of their hope by enforcing an exclusive 
regimen ? Recall the familiar story of their 
ministry. No sooner had they received the 
promised gift of guidance than they went out 
into all lands, proclaiming, as ambassadors of 
God, forgiveness to a waiting world. The 
story of the cross and the story of the Resur- 
rection made the staple of their message. 
They preached a death unto sin, because 
Christ had died, the just for the unjust. 
They preached a new birth unto righteous- 
ness, because Christ had risen, and opened 
unto men the gate of everlasting life. 

It was a simple Gospel, very simple in- 
deed. Among the people who listened to 
them, many repented and believed. These, 
after due instruction, the ambassadors re- 
ceived into the kingdom by a sacramental 
rite, and from that time forth they were ad- 
dressed and treated as heirs of the promises, 
as children adopted into the family of God, 
as members of the mystical Body of the Lord 
Jesus Christ. If afterwards some among 
these converted persons showed signs of 
weakness, whether in matter of faith or life ; 
if they yielded to this or that temptation, and 



PURITANISM : THE IDEA DIMINISHED. 83 

in the heat of the conflict with the Evil One 
gave way once and again, the chief pastors 
did not call upon the Church to cast out the 
offending brother that the Body might be 
kept pure ; but they bade the community 
use kindness and forbearance, that the erring 
one might be brought back, the fallen lifted 
up and made to stand. 

Not that there was no discipline exercised 
in the Primitive Church. On the contrary 
this branch of church government was prob- 
ably in a more healthy condition under the 
immediate eye of the Apostles than it ever 
has been since. We know that in one par- 
ticular instance St. Paul resorted to the ex- 
treme measure of excommunication. No 
doubt it w T as the unanimous teaching of the 
Apostolic Company that the hopelessly bad, 
the manifestly irreclaimable members should 
be cut off from the communion of the faith- 
ful. And yet in reading the Book of Acts 
and the Epistles, it is difficult to say which 
strikes us more forcibly, the earnestness of 
the exhortations to holiness, or the evident 
willingness to deal charitably and patiently 
with those members of the community who 
fail to reach the standard of what a Christian 
ought to be. 



84 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

How often St. Paul, for instance, puts in 
a word for " the weak brethren ! " How 
constantly he urges kindness, forbearance, 
pity, as motives that ought especially to 
guide the stronger members of the flock. 
We do not find in his words the faintest 
trace of any sentimental, feeble indulgence 
towards sin ; but we do find the most gen- 
erous and large-hearted spirit of love towards 
the sinning man or woman who needs to be 
called back and helped. The Church, as 
the Apostles present it, is a training school 
into which all are to be received who hon- 
estly desire to come. The Master of this 
school is Christ. They themselves are but 
ministers, or under-teachers, intrusted with 
the practical details of management, but in 
all things subject to the supreme will of the 
Head. In this school the very highest 
standard of attainment is to be constantly 
held up in both the departments of character 
and scholarship, but at the same time a wise 
patience must be exercised with those who 
fail to reach the standard, and even the risk 
of retaining some unworthy member is to be 
incurred rather than that any be too hastily 
excluded. 

The illustration is an imperfect one, as 



PURITANISM : THE IDEA DIMINISHED. 85 

any human illustration of a many-sided Di- 
vine truth must be. It is imperfect because 
the Church is something more than a school 
of learners or disciples ; it is a company of 
redeemed sinners, pardoned mortals received 
back to the forfeited privilege of communion 
with their Maker. But the illustration, 
albeit inadequate, serves well enough to 
bring out the important point, namely, that 
according to the original plan the Christian 
Church was meant to be an inclusive, com- 
prehensive, catholic society, and not the 
opposite. Any system, therefore, that pro- 
poses to curtail, narrow, or diminish the 
largeness of the blessing thus bestowed upon 
the w r orld does violence to the purpose of our 
Lord. 

III. The Experience of History. How 
has Puritanism succeeded as a practical work- 
ing system ? The principle has repeatedly 
asserted itself in the history of Christianity. 
Has it borne sweet fruit or bitter? It might 
seem natural, in making this appeal, to con- 
sider first of all the case of English Puritanism 
as being that embodiment of the separatist 
theory most familiar to the general reader. 
But it will be well to avoid doing this, for 
the reason that so many political and quasi- 



86 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

political questions are mixed up with the 
history of English Puritanism as to make the 
use of it as an illustration perilous. It is 
above all things desirable, in such an inquiry 
as this, to avoid anything that may stir 
prejudice, or put an artificial bias on the 
judgment. It so happens that we can find 
a very satisfactory instance of the conflict in 
actual experience between the two theories 
of the Church, the exclusive and the inclusive, 
so ancient as even to antedate that union be- 
tween Church and State which gives to the 
question of Puritanism in England and New 
England its complicated character. 

In the early ages of Christianity, before 
the faith of the cross had become one of the 
" tolerated religions " of the Roman Empire, 
there arose from time to time hot persecu- 
tions. When these fever-fits of pagan hate 
came on, a tremendous pressure was brought 
to bear upon all who were unwilling to deny 
the faith. The tests of renunciation de- 
manded by the civil authorities differed in 
the different persecutions. At one time the 
plan was to compel the Christians to abjure 
their religion by giving them the alternative 
of burning incense to the heathen gods or 
suffering torture. At another time an em- 



PURITANISM: THE IDEA DIMINISHED. 87 

peror conceived the idea of exterminating 
the hated sect by causing the destruction of 
all the sacred books of the Christians, the 
precious records of the faith. 

As might have been anticipated, there 
were among the brethren different degrees 
of resistance to these attempts. Loyalty to 
Christ ranged all the way from the unflinch- 
ing constancy of the martyrs, who gave up 
life itself rather than waver in their alle- 
giance, down to the timid time-serving of 
those who at the first note of alarm hastened 
to give in their adhesion to the religion of 
the state. Those who succumbed under the 
influence brought to bear upon them were 
classified by their fellow-Christians according 
to the degree of their inconstancy. There 
were some, for instance, who secured indem- 
nity from persecution by purchasing from 
the magistrates certificates to the effect that 
they had sacrificed to the heathen gods, 
although in point of fact they had not done 
so. This was reckoned a milder and more 
venial form of apostasy than theirs who 
voluntarily went over to the pagan side. 
Then there were " the traditors," as those 
were called who surrendered their copies of 
the Holy Scriptures, whence our word " trai- 



88 THE CHUBCH-IDEA. 

tor." There were also " the sacrificers" 
and " the incense-burners," names significant 
of the particular act by which the faith had 
been betrayed. 

Now when there came a lull, a longer or 
shorter period of quiet after a persecution, 
the question naturally arose in the Church, 
How should those whose timidity had over- 
mastered their loyalty be treated ? Should 
" the lapsed," as the whole body of the un- 
faithful were called, be received back into 
church-fellowship, or should the gates of the 
City of God be closed on them forever ? 

Opinions were divided. On the one side 
there was the desire to vindicate the purity 
of the Church, and an unwillingness to seem 
to make light of the heinous sin of denying 
Christ. On the other side there was the 
memory of Peter's denial and his Lord's for- 
giveness of him, together with a reluctance 
to drive into despair those who seemed to be 
deeply penitent for their weakness and terri- 
bly ashamed of it. The milder party were 
in favor of receiving back the weak brethren 
after satisfactory evidence of their repentance, 
or, at any rate, of not refusing them the 
consolations of religion in their last hour. 
The sterner party advocated excision. 



PURITANISM : THE IDEA DIMINISHED. 89 

The mind of the Church, after oscillating 
between these two courses, very decidedly 
inclined towards the compassionate one. The 
inclusive view triumphed over the exclusive, 
and those who were believed to be the truly 
penitent among the lapsed were taken back 
into the fellowship of the faithful. 

But in two memorable instances — one 
after the Decian, the other after the Diocle- 
tian persecution — the Puritan party, they 
who were in favor of utterly refusing recon- 
ciliation, made a secession from the Church. 
They protested that it was an intolerable 
scandal to be compelled to eat with traitors. 
They would not live in fellowship with men 
who were willing to allow the Body of the 
Lord to be thus shamefully defiled. So they 
departed. They organized their separate 
communities, and having chosen their own 
bishops (for in those days even Puritans 
were Episcopal), declared themselves " the 
Holy." 

And what was the result ? The result 
w T as, in each instance, continued existence 
for tw T o or three generations, ending in grad- 
ual dissolution and decay. In truth, these 
separatist bodies carried the seed of their 
destruction in their own bosoms. The ex- 



90 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

elusive principle that had moved them to 
rend themselves away from the fellowship of 
the Church, moved them, as fresh occasions 
of dispute arose, to rend themselves from one 
another, and so the rending process went on 
and on until, at last, there was nothing left 
to rend. 

Thus it must ever be with the working of 
the separatist principle in the Church. That 
principle tends inevitably to disintegration. 
One sect begets another, until gradually the 
original idea of a company of believers knit 
together in one organic body dies away, and 
nothing is left but the barren individualism, 
whose motto is " Every man for himself." 

In Great Britain alone, the development 
of the separatist principle has engendered, it 
is said, no less than ninety different sects, 
and this enumeration leaves out of the ac- 
count infidel organizations originally of Chris- 
tian parentage, as well as the many of all 
sorts that must have worked themselves out, 
and died of exhaustion in times past. 

Mystical interpreters of Holy Scripture 
have sometimes found in the seamless robe 
of Christ a symbol of His Church. The 
soldiers who crucified Him scrupled, it is 
said, to rend it. But we Christians, whom 



PURITANISM: THE IDEA DIMINISHED. 91 

faith and love ought to have taught better, 
have done what they, with neither faith nor 
love, but only out of worldly prudence, re- 
fused to do. We have rent into a thousand 
shreds, to every soldier in the wicked con- 
flict a part, that visible garment of light and 
beauty by which it was Christ's purpose that 
His spiritual presence in the world should be 
made real to men. It is hard to see how 
any single-hearted, humble minded follower 
of the Lord Jesus can look with satisfaction 
on the spectacle. 

There can be no doubt that the presence 
of the Puritan spirit in the Church is health- 
ful and desirable. There is need of a per- 
petual voice of warning against the tempta- 
tion to obliterate the line between the Church 
and the world. The strictness of the Puritan 
is an admirable balance to the charity of the 
Catholic. It is when the Puritan passes 
from undervaluing unity into breaking unity 
that the harm is done. He goes out and 
establishes his rival altar. He makes, as he 
imagines, a new and cleaner church. And 
what follows ? So long as the traditions of 
the quarrel can be kept alive, and the zeal 
of the fathers runs in the blood of the chil- 
dren, the sect preserves integrity ; but by 



92 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

and by the original ground of the separation 
is forgotten, and the movement either changes 
its direction, or runs out into nothingness 
like a river in the sand. 

We have been considering the short-com- 
ings of Puritanism as a polity. A parallel 
line of thought would show how the separa- 
tist principle also impoverishes doctrine. It 
stands to reason that the theology of a party 
— and every sect is by its very nature a 
party — must be one-sided. The founder of a 
"denomination" is generally a man who has 
a singularly clear and strong perception of 
some one truth of religion. This, the planet- 
ary centre around which all his own thoughts 
revolve, becomes, as a matter of course, 
the pivot of the system he imposes on his 
followers. This cardinal truth may be the 
Fatherhood of God, or it may be the Second 
Coming of our Saviour, or it may be the im- 
portance of administering baptism in some 
particular way : whatever it is, the sectarian 
mind dwells on it to the exclusion of all else, 
so that gradually articles of the faith which, 
at the start, no one would have thought of 
disavowing, fall into the background and are 
lost. 

Count the steeples in an American town. 



PURITANISM : THE IDEA DIMINISHED. 93 

It is all very well to say that they are so 
many finger-posts pointing heavenwards. 
In reality, each is the representative of a 
certain portion of truth, torn out of its place 
in the perfect circle of Catholic doctrine, and 
mangled in the process. 1 The Puritan theory, 
undervaluing, as it does, the importance of 
Church-life, forms a theology wholly subjec- 
tive ; and this, becoming gradually more and 
more attenuated, at last provokes men to ex- 
claim with a sharp satirist, " Enough of this 
invisible Christianity ! " 

No one can ever know how large a pro- 
portion of our current infidelity is traceable 
to the disgust engendered in educated minds 
by sectarian narrowness. The thoughtful 
boy, coming suddenly to the knowledge that 
the ocean of God's truth is broader and 
deeper than the village mill-pond by which 
he was brought up, is often hasty to resolve 
that he will start upon the open sea in his 
own skiff, unpiloted, and with no compass 
but the stars. 

The individual mind, however marvel- 
ously fashioned and endowed, is never com- 
petent to gather up into itself the full wealth 
of the Christian revelation ; and a sect that 

1 See Appendix note A. 



94 THE CHUECH-IDEA. 

does no more than reflect the thoughts of 
some spiritual giant of the past, is forever 
liable to overthrow at the hands of some 
spiritual giant of the present, possibly a 
child of its own begetting. Happy those 
souls that are content to rest in a truth 
larger than they can grasp, willing to " know 
in part," but not willing to call a part the 
whole. 



LIBERALISM : THE IDEA DISTORTED. 95 



LIBERALISM : THE IDEA DISTORTED. 

Some horticulturists are fond of forcing 
vegetable growths into gigantic forms. Others 
have the Japanese taste for cultivating dwarf 
varieties. With still others it is a passion 
to twist Nature into curious and grotesque 
shapes, compelling her, as it were, to carica- 
ture herself. In a word, the target of per- 
fection may be missed in any one of three 
ways. A shot may fly beyond the range, or 
it may fall short, or again it may be, as we 
say, "beside the mark." In Nature's arch- 
ery one of these errors gives us exaggeration, 
another diminution, and the third distortion. 

But plants and trees and animals are not 
the only things that grow. An idea, a cre- 
ative germ of thought, also possesses this 
strange power of taking increase. Not only 
so, an idea, equally with a plant, is suscepti- 
ble in its growth to disturbing influences 
from without, and may be forced into depar- 
ture from its normal type either in the way 
of exaggeration, diminution, or distortion. 



\)b THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

Granting, then, that there existed in the 
mind of Christ a distinct conception of the 
nature of the new society He founded, it is 
evident that the idea might have been ex- 
pected to undergo at men's hands these three 
forms of variation. In point of actual fact 
this is just what has occurred. In Romanism 
we have the Church-Idea exaggerated ; in 
Puritanism it is belittled ; in Liberalism it is 
caricatured. 

Two of these misapprehensions of the full 
Gospel of the Kingdom have been already 
studied. There remains the third — Liber- 
alism. 

What is Liberalism? One might well 
wish to be excused from answering the ques- 
tion on the score of its difficulty. It is not a 
question that can be answered in a breath ; 
and yet it must be answered, and that satis- 
factorily, before we can go on. The reason 
why it is hard to define Liberalism is because 
of the uncertain and indefinite nature of the 
thing itself. In dealing with Romanism and 
Puritanism, we had something tangible to 
handle, for Romanism and Puritanism are 
systems. But Liberalism is not a system. 
Its very characteristic is its want of system. 
Liberalism is a spirit, a tendency, a move- 



LIBERALISM: THE IDEA DISTORTED. 97 

ment, a slippery something in striving to 
grasp which we seem to clutch the air. And 
yet, in spite of the subtle character that 
attaches to the word, every educated mind 
associates a meaning with it, and is sure that 
it stands for something that does actually 
exist. 

Perhaps it will help us to ascertain just 
what Liberalism is, if we determine in ad- 
vance what it is not. First of all, then, let 
it be carefully noted that Liberalism is not 
the same thing as liberality. The two words 
furnish an instance of a curious law of lan- 
guage, according to which substantives of 
widely different character may be formed 
from one and the same adjective. Thus from 
" scrupulous " we make both " scrupulous- 
ness" and "scrupulosity," — the one a 
strong, the other a weak trait. " Prudent " 
gives us " prudence " and " prudery," — the 
first a quality we value, the second a quality 
we dislike. And so also the word " liberal " 
develops, on the one hand, into " liberality," 
a thing every one admires, and, on the 
other into " liberalism," a thing many per- 
sons distrust. Indeed, there exists between 
" liberality " and " liberalism " much the 
same kind of distinction that we observe be- 

7 



98 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

tween " liberty " and " license." Liberty is 
freedom subject to the control of righteous 
law. License is freedom declaring itself in- 
dependent of all law. An advocate for 
liberty only asks to be free to do what is 
right. An advocate for license asks to be 
free to do what he pleases. 

We are now ready for a definition, and can 
make it the more intelligently for having 
taken these preliminary steps. Let the defi- 
nition be this : Liberalism in religion is the 
spirit that is impatient of anything like au- 
thority, whether in the line of doctrine or dis- 
cipline. 

Liberalism passes in society under various 
names, some of them very high-sounding 
ones. Thus we have " free-thought," the 
equivalent of the old-fashioned free-thinking ; 
we have " advanced thought," we have " free 
religion," we have " the higher criticism," 
we have " the modern spirit," and the like. 
All of them are phrases dazzling and fasci- 
nating to a certain class of minds, but under- 
neath them all there lies the disposition to 
rebel against authority because it is authority, 
and an eagerness to sacrifice upon the altar 
of spiritual freedom all that makes it worth 
our while to be spiritually free. 



LIBERALISM: THE IDEA DISTORTED. 99 

The battle-cry of Liberalism is, " Religion 
without dogma, and a Church without a 
pale ! " It is a popular shout. Dogma is 
one of the best-hated words in the language. 
Any man may cast a stone at it, not only 
with impunity, but with applause. Harmless 
enough in itself, the word has somehow come 
to have a very spectral and uncanny look in 
the eyes of the public. 

And yet, when we sit down calmly and 
think about it, how can there well be any 
such thing as " religion without dogma ? " 
A dogma is simply an article of faith received 
and held as certain. Now since a religion 
must, for its very life's sake, claim to be true, 
and since the merest pittance of truth, when 
once put into the form of statement, be it 
a statement of only three words, becomes 
dogma, it is difficult to see how a perfectly 
undogmatic religion is to be attained. It can 
only come to pass in one way, and that is by 
persuading men to preface every article of 
faith with a " perhaps." If the world can 
be taught to throw all its religious thinking; 
into the form of hypothesis, and to begin its 
creed with "I conjecture" instead of "I 
believe," the victory of Liberalism over dog- 
ma will be complete. No less a task than 



100 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

this, the advanced thought of our day pro- 
poses to itself. 

Christianity, as a religion, rests upon cer- 
tain alleged supernatural facts. Take one 
of the simplest and least technical statements 
of these facts we have. Let it be that short 
compend of first principles known as " the 
Apostles' Creed." From its opening sen- 
tence, where we confess our faith in an Al- 
mighty Father, Maker of Heaven and Earth, 
to those solemn closing words that tell of our 
belief in an everlasting life to come, there is 
not a single affirmation which Liberalism, in 
some one or other of its forms, has not made 
bold to doubt. Indeed, Liberalism desires to 
treat all these points as open questions to be 
discussed, like the unsettled problems of sci- 
ence and philosophy, without the slightest 
semblance of restraint. 

But the Church takes, and always has 
taken, a very different view of this whole 
matter. The Church accounts herself to be 
a custodian or trustee of what was at the 
beginning committed to her to keep. The 
very existence of the Church rests upon the 
revealed truths she holds like family jewels 
in her charge. Take away the facts in which 
Christians say that they believe, and the fab- 



LIBERALISM: THE IDEA DISTORTED. 101 

ric we name the Church becomes at once no 
better than a tottering shell, unfit to stand 
against a breath of wind. 

This constancy of the Church to her be- 
lief is a perpetual irritation to Liberalism. 
" What is this Church of Christ," it asks, 
" that she should presume to put a check or 
barrier to the absolute freedom of man's 
thought ? Whence comes the authority that 
meets us with a ' Thus saith the Lord,' and 
bids us listen and obey ? Away w T ith her ! 
Away with her ! She is an enemy to lib- 
erty ! " But when Liberalism thus cries out 
against the Church, and demands the level- 
ing of her walls upon the plea of larger lib- 
erty, Christians have a right to raise the 
questions, What is liberty ? and where is lib- 
erty to be sought? An Apostle has given 
an answer that will suffice for those who are 
themselves believers. This is what he says 
about it : " Where the Spirit of the Lord is, 
there is liberty." 

If there is any promise in the New Testa- 
ment that is clear and definite, it is the 
promise that the Spirit shall be given to the 
Church. Before He suffered, our Lord, in 
the most solemn manner gave to His Apos- 
tles, the then representatives of His Church, 



102 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

the assurance that the Holy Spirit should be 
their constant guide and stay. It was in the 
strength of this assurance that those Apostles 
made bold to speak of the Church as a body 
in which, as in a temple, the Spirit of God 
dwells. If, then, it be true, as one of them 
avers, that where the Spirit of the Lord is, 
there is liberty, and if it be also true that, 
wherever else the Spirit of the Lord dwells, 
His presence is especially and particularly 
promised to the Church, then how can we 
refuse this plainest of inferences that in the 
Church, and in the fellowship of the Church's 
Head, true liberty is to be sought ? 

But it may be said that this conclusion is 
reached only by an adroit dovetailing of texts 
for which Liberalism has small respect. The 
argument has weight with those w 7 ho believe 
the Apostles to have been taught by God, 
but not with those who look upon the Apos- 
tles as ordinary men, endowed with " a gen- 
ius for religion." Granted. But let us see 
whether the same conclusion may not be 
reached by quite a different path. 

A man complains that it cramps his liberty 
to be obliged to accept as certain and indis- 
putable those great doctrines of which the 
Church has been the witness and keeper 
from the beginning. He should feel freer if 



LIBERALISM : THE IDEA DISTORTED. 103 

those points were to be thrown open to de- 
bate. But suppose he has his wish : what kind 
of a freedom would it be? Begin with any 
one of the primal teachings of Holy Scripture. 
Take, for example, that all-important dogma 
with which the Creed already quoted opens : 
" I believe in God the Father Almighty, 
Maker of Heaven and Earth." This brief 
declaration, simple as it seems to be, admits 
of at least three doubts. 

First, there is the possible doubt as to 
whether there be any God at all. The Scrip- 
tures themselves assure us that such a doubt 
has been entertained. " The fool hath said 
in his heart, There is no God." Here, then, 
there is room for one controversy. 

Secondly, there is the possible doubt 
whether this Almighty Being, supposing 
Him to exist, possesses the attributes of a 
Father. Perhaps there is a God, but is He 
indeed God the Father? There are many 
facts in life that seem to militate very strong- 
ly against such a belief. It certainly is most 
difficult to reconcile the mysterious allotments 
of sorrow, pain, and wretchedness we see 
around us with any simply human concep- 
tion of fatherhood. Here, then, there is 
room for another controversy. 

Thirdly, there is the possible doubt as to 



104 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

whether God can in any proper sense be 
called " the Maker of Heaven and Earth." 
There are not wanting those who tell us that 
to look for any God other than the indwell- 
ing mind in Nature, the life-principle of the 
Universe, the immanent Spirit, is to grope 
after a nonentity. God and Nature are de- 
clared to be conterminous and coeternal ; and, 
if this be true, it certainly is an abuse of 
language to speak of One who has no exist- 
ence apart from the heavens and the earth 
as being the " Maker " of them both. Here, 
then, there is room for still another contro- 
versy ; making the third that can be evolved 
out of one single article of the faith, and that 
the very one which is least often called in 
question. 

Now the ground that the Christian Church 
occupies is perfectly intelligible and distinct. 
The Church says, " This is the first article of 
our belief. We regard it as settled and un- 
changeable. We are ready to defend it, with 
the weapons of argument, against attacks 
from without, but we cannot and will not 
allow it to be questioned from within ; for 
such a permission would be nothing more 
nor less than a breach of trust. The faith 
has been given to us to keep, and we must 
keep it, or else turn traitors to our Lord." 



LIBERALISM: THE IDEA DISTORTED. 105 

The position of Liberalism is also perfectly 
intelligible and distinct. Liberalism says, 
" No matter where you got this article of 
the faith, it must come into the arena of dis- 
cussion along with everything else. This is 
the age of investigation, and no belief is too 
sacred for our analysis. To draw the line 
anywhere, and say, * Here debate must cease,' 
is to fetter and enslave free thought." 

These being the respective positions of the 
Church and Liberalism, to which are we to 
look for the truest and best kind of liberty ? 
Or, to put the question in another form, 
Which is indeed the spiritually free man, — 
he who believes with heart and mind and 
soul in God the Father Almighty, Maker of 
Heaven and Earth, and who in the strength 
of this belief lives out his life trustfully and 
hopefully, confident that nothing possibly can 
harm him so long as the Sheltering Wings 
and the Guiding Hand are near ; or he who, 
resolutely bent on keeping clear of what he 
deems the shackles of a definite belief, dwells 
all his days in a cloud-land of uncertainty, a 
companionless spirit to whom God is " a feel- 
ing," prayer an absurdity, futurity a blank ? 
Which of these two is the really free man ? 
And where lies true liberty, — on the side of 



106 THE CHURCH— IDEA. 



the b:aste:I Spirit of the Age. or on the hie 
of that other and better spirit, the Spirit of 

T;:e yuestim all lies in a nut-shell. En :-r 
is :: milage. Truth is I: G 

revealed troth to men in Jesus Christ, which 
truth without such a revelation could not fa r 
been discovered, is it not as plain as it can be 
that those who refuse to receive this truth 
are the b on amen, and those who gladly re- 
:eive it the rree ? •* Then said Jesus to those 
Jew> which believed on Hi:::. I:' ye :on- 
tinue in my word, then are ye my disc: les 
indeed: And ye -hah know the truth, and the 
shah make vourree." 1 St. Pari'- say- 
ing about liberty is but the scholar's echo ot 
these the Master's words. 

We have been considering the attitude 
Liberalism holm mwaras Christian Theology, 
strictly s: nailed. Its attituae towards Chris- 
tian ethi:s might be ma lie the -tube:: :: a 

_ .1 iimuiry. Theology ana morality 
sisters. To sunder tueiu is woe to both. 
The one is religion looking God-ward, the 
other is religion looking man-ward. Tie 
connection between the creed mmu- 

nity and its usages and customs is much 

1 C:iz vOi. it. 12. 



LIBERALISM : THE IDEA DISTORTED. 107 

more close than it is now the fashion to ad- 
mit. The poet shows the insight of the phi- 
losopher when he affirms that 

" Manners are not idle , " 

for manners are morals, and morals are the 
fruit of principles, false or true. 

The influence of Liberalism upon this hu- 
man side of religion has been significantly 
pointed out by a familiar writer upon the his- 
tory of language. " Full of instruction and 
warning," he remarks, " is our present em- 
ployment of the word ' libertine.' It signi- 
fies, according to its earliest use in French 
and English, a speculative free-thinker in 
matters of religion, and in the theory of mor- 
als, or, it might be, of government. But as, 
by a sure process, free-thinking does and will 
end in free-acting, as he who has cast off the 
one yoke will cast off the other, so a libertine 
came, in two or three generations, to signify 
a profligate." 1 

The statement is undoubtedly too strongly 
put. " He who has cast off the one yoke " 
does not, as a necessary consequence, " cast 
off the other." The champions of Liberal- 
ism have often been, as individuals, eminently 

i Abp. Trench, The Study of Words, s. v. 



108 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

irreproachable in their lives. But the sub- 
stantial truth of the writer's argument is not 
affected by this fact. Principles which a phi- 
losopher can hold in his study with no dam- 
age to his personal purity may prove to be 
poisonous leaven for the daily bread of a 
community. The multitude have wit enough 
to see that the same logical hammer that has 
destroyed the first table of the Law can also 
shiver the second, if they only have the mind 
to strike ; for if nothing be settled about our 
duty towards God, it is an easy inference 
that nothing is settled about our duty towards 
our neighbors. 

Certain it is that Liberalism, under all its 
forms, betrays a strong reluctance to recog- 
nize the guilt of sin. Sin is an error, sin is 
imperfection, sin is partial knowledge, sin is 
spiritual ill-health, sin is a misdirection of the 
will, sin is — anything but guilt. The race 
needs refining, that is all ; and man may 
pray, "Lord, teach!" but never "Lord, 
forgive ! " We find this " liberal " view of 
human guilt penetrating every department 
of modern thought. Thus we have histor- 
ical writers like the late Mr. Buckle, propos- 
ing to formulate the laws of crime and re- 
duce them to a system ; poets of the animal 



LIBERALISM : THE IDEA DISTORTED. 109 

order teaching that instinct is the only gauge 
of duty ; pantheistic essayists defining evil as 
" good in the making ; " and authors of ro- 
mance justifying the outrageous vagaries of 
their heroes on grounds of physiological ne- 
cessity. 

It is now evident for what reason Liberal- 
ism was called at the outset a distortion of 
the Divine idea. A Church fiercely intoler- 
ant of dogma, while mildly tolerant of sin, 
is assuredly but a caricature of that clear- 
walled city built upon a rock, whose name 
is Holy. 

The Catholic Church of Liberalism ought 
rather to be likened to the restless, passion- 
ate, tumultuous sea. And so it has been lik- 
ened by one 1 whom the writer would by no 
means charge with ultra-liberalism, in a word- 
picture of marvellous felicity. 

" This great rolling ocean, which looks up 
to God, is ordered by God, and obeys God, 
though each wave-crest offers its own hom- 
age, each tide-surge worships in its own way. 
6 How lawless ! ' mutters the scientific theolo- 
gian standing on the beach. « What rebels ! ' 
cries the petty prince from some sectarian 
Heptarchy, as the disobedient tide drives 

1 The Rev. Edward Everett Hale. 



110 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

him from his throne upon the sand. 1 But 
the great God looks on, and sees that there 
is no rebellion, and that there is perfect law. 
This ocean never rests. It pants, it heaves, 
or it throws up its blue waves till they crest 
themselves with white and faint away ; or 
they pour on incessant, one infinite proces- 
sion, to fling themselves in order against the 
shore : or they drop into a sleep which is 
not death, but breathes steadily and regularly 
as a sleeping child, and so in their calm re- 
flect the blue of heaven : or they fling them- 
selves higher and higher toward the sky, 
dropping down exhausted only to start up 
again with one effort more : or. lying still be- 
neath His sunshine, they deliver to His de- 
mand the unseen vapors, which He transfuses 
into delicious showers with which to bless 
the thirsty ground. And in this rest or in 
that convulsion, tide- wave, wind-wave, white 
crest, spray-dust, or unseen vapor-cloud, each 
in its own beautiful service, obeys one law 
of attraction. — fulfils the word of Him who 
sets it in order. That is the ima^e Christ 
chooses to describe his Church." 2 

1 It is. of course, by a poetical license that this brilliant, but 
not always accurate writer makes Canute the Dane a repre- 
sentative of the Heptarchy. 

2 The Elements of Christian Doctrine, and its Development. 



LIBERALISM : THE IDEA DISTORTED. Ill 

Nothing in the way of rhetorical effort 
could easily surpass this ; but most readers 
will be a little surprised to learn that the say- 
ing of our Lord's from which this analogy 
between Church and ocean was drawn, 1 is 
the following : — 

" For as in the days that were before the 
flood, they were eating and drinking, marry- 
ing and giving in marriage, until the day that 
Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until 
the flood came and took them all away ; so 
shall also the coming of the Son of Man be." 

Most interpreters of the words of Jesus, 
St. Peter 2 among them, have thought, natu- 
rally enough, that it was Noe's preservation 
from the violence of the sea, rather than the 
whelming of the unrighteous world beneath it, 
that gave point to the similitude. The Ark 
is the Church, not the wild waters on which 
it floats solitary but secure. And yet this 
writer finds in the deluge " the image Christ 
chooses to describe His Church." God forbid. 

The Catholic Church of Liberalism can 
consistently acknowledge no limits narrower 
than those that bound the human race itself. 

Five Sermons preached before the South Congregational So- 
ciety, Boston, 1860 p. 41. 

1 The Elements of Christian Doctrine, and its Development, 
P- 4 0. 2 i p e t. iii. 21. 



112 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

" It goes below any one specific form of relig- 
ion, and seeks to find the common ground 
on which all religions, or more properly relig- 
ion itself, rests, and plants itself there. It 
contemplates the ultimate union, not only of 
all sects in Christendom, but of all religions, 
Christian and non-Christian in one." x To 
draw a line anywhere, and say, " On this side 
is the Church, On that the world," would be 
a proceeding fatally inconsistent with the first 
principles of Liberalism. It would be setting 
up a barrier, and a barrier is of all things the 
one that Liberalism most abhors. 

Liberalism would make of the Church a 
vast, world-wide debating club ; a society of 
which every man should be, in virtue of his 
birth, a member, and in which all questions 
touching either the Creator or His creatures, 
the past, the present, or the future, might be 
endlessly discussed, and never permanently 
settled. 

Now there can be nothing to prevent men 
from taking this position if they choose. In- 
deed, it is the only position that a denier 
of revelation can consistently assume. But 
when it is attempted to make it out that such 

1 First Annual Report of Free Religious Association, Boston, 
1868. 



LIBERALISM: THE IDEA DISTORTED. 113 

notions are reconcilable with Christianity, 
even with a Christianity that has been wa- 
tered down to its very weakest dilution, then 
it is time for those who believe that the Gos- 
pel is something better than a guess, and the 
Church of Christ something more than a con- 
trivance of man's brain, to speak out and say 
so plainly. 

The Holy Catholic Church is not a volun- 
tary religious association formed by men for 
the purpose of freely handling the problems 
of human destiny. It is a family, a brother- 
hood, a household, to whose guardian care the 
archives of the faith have been intrusted. The 
members of this family have no authority to 
tamper with, to change or modify the sacred 
deposit given into their care. God's oracles 
are a trust. The generations before us held 
it for our sake ; we are to hold it for the gen- 
erations yet to come. And let it be held lib- 
erally, that is to say, generously and charita- 
bly, for we cannot err upon the side of too 
much love for men ; and it is well always to re- 
member that even " Jews, Turks, Infidels, and 
Heretics," although not of God's household, 
the Church, are yet members of that scattered 
family for " which our Lord Jesus Christ was 
contented to be betrayed, and to suffer death 
upon the cross." 



114 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

There is a short sentence in one of the 
most beautiful of the parables, which gathers 
up with marvellous comprehensiveness the 
essentials of Catholicity, while at the same 
time it may serve to warn us against those 
very three perversions to which, as has been 
shown, the Church-Idea is subject. A glance 
at it will answer the double purpose of a 
review and a comparison, and may not inap- 
propriately close the present chapter. 

Our Lord is speaking in His character of 
the Good Shepherd, and after telling of His 
great love towards the sheep already gathered, 
He thus proceeds : — 

" And other sheep I have, which are not 
of this fold ; them also I must bring, and they 
shall hear My voice, and there shall be one 
fold and one Shepherd/' 1 

Take this prophecy part by part, and notice 
how the words, intended to apply primarily 
to His Jewish hearers, have also a lesson for 
ourselves. 

" Them also I must bring, and they shall 
hear My voice" This may be understood as 
Christ's gentle expostulation with the spirit of 
Romanism. Rome has indeed heard His voice, 
but she has heard and given heed to other 

i John x. 16. 



LIBERALISM : THE IDEA DISTORTED. 115 

voices than His, the voices of enchanters and 
enchantresses that have led her away captive. 

" One is your Master, even Christ," said 
Jesus to the Apostles, " and all ye are breth- 
ren." Had Rome cherished this word, the 
Papacy would not have been. 

" I am the w T ay, and the truth, and the 
life. No man cometh unto the Father but by 
Me." Had Rome cherished this word, saint- 
worship and Mariolatry would not have been. 

" It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh 
profiteth nothing." Had Rome cherished this 
word, transubstantiation would not have been. 

" Drink ye all of this, for this is My blood 
of the New Testament." Had Rome cher- 
ished this word, the denial of the cup to the 
people would not have been. 

Yes, it is because Rome has followed after 
other words than those of the Lord Jesus, that 
she has lost, or rather overlaid, the true idea 
of Catholicity. 

Again listen to the Good Shepherd's voice : 
" And there shall be onefold." 

This is His gentle expostulation with the 
spirit of Puritanism. In his zeal for the well- 
being of God's heritage, the Puritan cannot 
bear to see the tares intermingled with the 
wheat. Whether the good grain suffers or 



116 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

not, these hurtful weeds must be plucked up, 
and that speedily. The one message to which 
his ears are always open is the command, 
" Come out, and be ye separate." As a 
necessary consequence, division and subdivis- 
sion follow upon the application of this prin- 
ciple ; the idea of the one fold is hopelessly 
lost ; and presently, in the strife between a 
score of competing folds, it is no wonder that 
poor, simple souls find themselves bewildered 
and distraught. Not that Puritanism is whol- 
ly in the wrong ; only as Romanism, in its zeal 
for the " one fold," forgets some things that the 
Good Shepherd says ; so this system, which 
is practically the opposite of Romanism, in its 
zeal for some things the Good Shepherd says, 
forgets in its turn the value of the " one fold." 
Listen yet once more : " One Shepherd" 
Here is the corrective to the error of 
the liberal extreme. The mistake of Liber- 
alism lies precisely in this, that it is not 
contented with the " one Shepherd." It 
looks for, and it demands, other leaders 
than the Son of Mary. " The Christian 
Church," writes one who heartily believes 
what he says, " is not large enough for 
this independent, sturdy, vigorous America. 
A native religion, not fetched from beyond 



LIBERALISM : THE IDEA DISTORTED. 117 

the seas, a religion universalized by the ge- 
nius of American liberty, must yet supplant 
the narrow and cramping Christianity of the 
Churches." There spoke the true spirit of 
Liberalism. It is reconcilable with the idea 
of " One Fold," if we will only make the Fold 
as wide as the world, and give free play in it 
to all conceivable religions ; but it is not re- 
concilable with the " one Shepherd," for to 
acknowledge unreserved fealty to Him is, in 
the eye of Liberalism, to put shackles upon 
the freedom of the soul. 

True Catholicity holds all three of the re- 
quirements of the prophecy in faithful equi- 
poise. 

It listens to the Good Shepherd's voice. 

It is loyal to the idea of the " One Fold." 

It owns no other Master than the Christ 
Himself. 

God in His mercy grant that no " native 
religion " ever supplant this one " fetched 
from beyond the seas.' 5 



118 THE CBTRCH-IDEA. 



VI. 

THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 

Our public orators are continually remind- 
ing us that America is " the theatre of a 
grand experiment." When we modestly ask 
to be told what the experiment is, we have, 
to be sure, some difficulty in getting a plain 
and consistent answer. Some will have it 
that it is Republican Government which is 
on trial, others say the federal principle, others 
popular education, still others universal suf- 
frage. But in truth the elder world is not 
wholly unfamiliar with these things. A Re- 
public is no novelty in history, neither is a 
federation, nor yet public schools and ballot 
boxes. 

The peculiarity of our situation really lies, 
not in the fact that we have unexpectedly 
come into possession of a new stock of ideas, 
but in this, that we are testing a novel com- 
bination of old ideas under circumstances pe- 
culiarly favorable to success. 

Instead, then, of speaking of the American 



THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 119 

experiment, it might be wiser to say the 
American experiments. Indeed, there is 
nothing to which our country may be better 
compared than a great working laboratory, 
where a host of students are busily engaged, 
each on his own separate investigation. Cru- 
cibles of every shape and size are on the fire, 
retorts are steaming, solutions crystallizing, 
blow-pipes hissing in all directions. Who is 
to collate the note-books of the various an- 
alysts, and draw out in a finished form the re- 
sults of discovery, if any discovery there be, 
another age must determine. At present all 
is activity and bustle. Each experimental- 
ist firmly believes himself to be upon the scent 
of truth, and it is hard to persuade any one 
of the number that possibly his neighbor's 
line of inquiry may be as important as his 
own. 

Under these circumstances the present 
writer may, without apology, boldly claim 
that the experiment of greatest moment now 
in progress here is not popular government 
at all, but this, The mutual independence of 
Church and State. 

We have dissolved a partnership which for 
fifteen hundred years the world held sacred. 
Never since the short period between the 



120 THE CHUECH-IDEA. 

Edict of Milan i a. d. 313) and the Council 
of Nice (a. d. 3-5). has the religion of the 
cross found itself in circumstances at all par- 
allel to those that environ it here and now. 

Sow this state of things has come about, a 
quick review of the past will show, 

During the first two centuries of her exist- 
ence the Church of Christ occupied the posi- 
tion of ... lespised and persecuted sect. In 
the third century she was still oppressed, but 
at the same timeless lespised than feared. 
Early in the fourth century State persecution 
seased, and that far more deadly enemy to 
the Church's health State patronage began. 
It was in the person of the Emperor Constan- 
tine that the idea of an alliance between 
Church and State was first embodied. Ever 
since his day that alliance has been under 
one form or another perpetuated throughout 
Christian Europe. Whether the grim saying 
ofHobbes that the Papacy is only M the ghost 
of the old Roman Empire sitting crowned 
upon the grave thereof" be true or not, it is 
worth remembering that at Rome was struck 
the treaty which through all these centuries 
has welded Church and State. 

But the conviction of the necessity of such 
a compact, or at least of its great value, has 



THE AMERICAN PEOBLEM. 121 

by no means been confined to the Roman 
Catholic section of Christendom. At the 
time of the Reformation the countenance 
and aid of the State was sought with perhaps 
equal zeal by both parties. Neither side was 
quite ready to disclaim the assistance of the 
arm of flesh. Rome, since she left the Cata- 
combs, had always leaned more or less heav- 
ily on that support, and the leaders of the re- 
forming movement feared that without some 
such shelter the fruits of their victories would 
be insecure. 

Accordingly at that momentous epoch 
there sprang up all over Protestant Europe 
those forms of national religion known as 
u Establishments," and through them the va- 
rious governments undertook to guarantee to 
their subjects the benefits and privileges of a 
pure Christianity. The establishments took 
shape according to the temper and bias of 
their framers. In some of them the principle 
was accepted that the Church is a society 
subject to the State, and the creature of its 
laws. This view of the matter degrades the 
Christian ministry to the level of what has 
been satirically called "a moral police." 

In our mother country the better ground 
was taken that the Church is a society dis- 



122 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

tinct from the State, capable of entering into 
partnership with it, but still retaining, even 
during the continuance of the compact, a sep- 
arate identity. 1 

1 M. Guizot gives the following compendious summary of 
the possible relations between Church and State: — 

" 1st. The State is subordinate to the Church. In the moral 
point of view, in the chronological order itself, the Church pre- 
cedes the State. The Church is the first society, superior, eter- 
nal. Civil society is nothing more than the consequence. It is 
to the spiritual power that sovereignty belongs of right. The 
temporal power should merely act as its instrument. 

"2d. It is not the State which is in the Chhurc, but the Church 
which is in the State. It is the State which rules the land, 
which makes war, which levies taxes, governs the external 
destinies of the citizens. It is for the State to give to the re- 
ligious society the form and constitution which best accord 
with the interests of general society. Whenever creeds cease 
to be individual, whenever they give birth to associations, 
these come within the cognizance and authority of the tempo- 
ral power, the only veritable power in a State. 

" 3d. The Church ought to be independent, unnoticed in the 
State. The State has nothing to do with her. The temporal 
power ought to take no cognizance of religious creeds; it 
should let them approximate or separate — let them go on and 
govern themselves as they think best; it has no right, no oc- 
casion, to interfere in their affairs. 

" 4th. The Church and the State are distinct societies, it is 
true; but they are at the same time close neighbors, and are 
nearly interested in one another. Let them live separate, but 
not estranged. Let them keep up an alliance on certain con- 
ditions, each living to itself, but each making sacrifices for the 
other; in case of need, each lending the other its support."- 
Hi&t. of Civ. in France. Lect. III. 

In the above classification, which seems to be exhaustive, 
(1) represents the Papal, (2) the Erastian, (3) the American, 
and (4) the English theor}^. 



THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 123 

But ever since the day when these adjust- 
ments were first determined, the mind of 
Protestant Christendom has chafed and fret- 
ted under them. Spiritual men have felt the 
truth of our Lord's saying, " My Kingdom is 
not of this world," 1 and have perceived the 

1 See a Sermon upon this text, entitled The Roman Coun- 
cil, lately preached before the University of Oxford, by the 
Rev. J. B. Mozley , B. D. The line of thought held in the Ser- 
mon is in many respects so like the one followed in this paper 
that the author feels bound to say that at the time of writing 
he had not seen any report of Canon Mozley's words. 

But even the most clear-headed of English Churchmen, 
however much they may dislike some features of the Estab- 
lishment, shrink, with the national dislike of change, from ac- 
cepting that original status of the Church in which she was 
utterly and entirely independent of the Civil Power. Thus 
Canon Mozley guards his strong statements about the distinct 
scopes and aims of Church and State with some limiting words 
against an absolute separation between the two ; and unless 
Mr. Gladstone has very recently changed his mind he also, 
while standing on the ruins of the Irish Establishment, still 
believes in Establishments as desirable under some circum- 
stances. Here are his words : — 

" I can hardly believe that even those, including as they do 
so many men upright and able, who now contend on principle 
for the separation of the Church from the State, are so deter- 
mined to exalt their theorem to the place of a universal truth, 
that they ask us to condemn the whole of that process, by 
which, as the gospel spread itself through the civilized world, 
Christianity became incorporated with the action of civil au- 
thority, and with the frame-work of public law. In the course of 
human history, indeed, we perceive little of unmixed evil, and 

far lessof universal good But Christ died for the race; 

and those who notice the limited progress of conversion in the 
world until alliance with the civil authority gave to His re- 



124 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

impolicy, as well as the difficulty of adminis- 
tering under the same forms and usages the 
things of Caesar and the things of God. An 
impulse in the same direction has come also 
from those who are hostile to the Christian 
faith, and who desire nothing so much as to 
see the last of the Church of Christ. They 

ligion a wider access to the attention of mankind, may be in- 
clined to doubt whether, without that alliance, its immeasur- 
able and inestimable social results would ever have been at- 
tained. Allowing for all that may be justly urged against 
the danger of mixing secular motives with religious adminis- 
tration, and above all against the intrusion of force into the 
domain of thought, I for one cannot desire that Constantine 
in the government of the Empire, that Justinian in the forma- 
tion of its code of laws, that Charlemagne in refounding So- 
ciety, or that Elizabeth in the crisis of the English Reforma- 
tion, should have acted on the principle that the State and the 
Church in themselves are separate or alien powers, incapable 
of coalition." — J- Chapter of Autobiography. BytheEt. Hon. 
W. E. Gladstone. M. P., pp. 58, 59. 

But can Mr. Gladstone deny the truth of the following : — 
" You may bring about many wonderful things through the 
pliable and elastic constitution of the British Empire, but there 
is one thing which by its very nature is an impossibility to 
bring about even by an act of Parliament. 

" It is this. That two powers should combine to govern a 
people in a united religion, which powers themselves are dis- 
united in opinion as to what such religion should be. And 
especially when one of these powers, holding the sword and 
virtually having the regulation of the machinery of the other, 
is in itself composed of an heterogeneous mass of accidental 
men fluctuating from year to year, and held together by no 
one bond of faith, not even of Christianity." — State Inter- 
ference in Matters Spiritual ; Bennett's Preface to the Frag- 
ment by Hurrell Froude. 



THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 125 

are willing enough to have her die an easy 
death. Perhaps they would rather prefer 
that her end should not be violent. But 
gently or roughly she must somehow be put 
out of the way, and the first step toward this 
end seems to them to be the withdrawal of 
Government support. In the event, it may 
be seen, that so far from being put out of the 
way, the Church, when rid of that entan- 
gling friendship of the world which is " en- 
mity with God," is more in the way than 
ever. 

To these opposite but conspiring causes it 
is due that there exists throughout Europe 
to-day a growing public sentiment in favor 
of the abolition of the union between Church 
and State. Among Roman Catholics, this 
sentiment takes the shape of opposition to the 
temporal power of the Pope. With Protes- 
tants, the cry is " Disestablishment." Sub- 
stantially, it is one and the same thought that 
is seething in the minds of both communions. 

But it is to be remembered that in our own 
country this public sentiment has been antici- 
pated by about one hundred years. Here in 
America we have the accomplished fact be- 
fore our eyes. One of the earliest fruits of 
the Revolution, and certainly one of its most 



126 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

noteworthy results, was the declaration con- 
tained in the first amendment to the Consti- 
tution of the United States : — 

"Congress shall make no law respecting 
an establishment of religion ." 

In this short sentence lies wrapped the 
secret of our national destiny; and on the 
wisdom or unwisdom of this decision of the 
fathers hinges the well-being of their chil- 
dren's children. This is a strong statement; 
some will be disposed to call it a wild one. 
The popular mind judges of the compara- 
tive importance of issues by the noise that 
is made over them, and because less is said 
and written about our religious, than about 
our political future, it is very generally sup- 
posed that the former will take care of itself. 
But in reality, slow as men may be to admit 
it, the religious vastly overtops in dignity and 
in import the secular question. History, like 
nature, works some of its grandest processes 
in silence ; and even if no single word of 
prophecy were lifted, it would still be true 
that our destiny as a people is to be mainly 
determined by the mould into which our 
Christianity shall be cast. 

Let us not shrink, then, from facing one of 
the first conditions of the American problem, 



THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 127 

which is this, that our Goverment rests in 
theory, and must eventually rest in practice, 
upon a purely secular basis. 

We are as yet a Christian people, and we 
have a right to say that we live in a Christian 
land, simply because the majority of the pop- 
ulation are nominally of the Christian faith. 
But we have no right to say that we live un- 
der a Christian government, for Christ and 
His religion are alike unknown to that instru- 
ment which alone gives the government its 
authority, — the Constitution of the United 
States. 

To be sure, there never has been any civil 
government in the world that has fully de- 
served the epithet " Christian," for the plain 
reason that there never has been a govern- 
ment willing to incorporate the golden rule 
into the law of nations. But then, a great 
many governments have been anxious to be 
considered Christian ; they have professed 
allegiance to the Christian faith, and in a de- 
gree at least, have lent themselves to the sup- 
port of Christian ideas. Our government 
does not even care to be reckoned Christian. 
It cannot be called an irreligious government, 
for it permits religions of whatever sort to go 
on their way unmolested, so that they refrain 
from molesting others. But a Christian gov- 



128 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

ernment ours certainly is not, for there is 
nothing in its structure to prevent either In- 
fidels, Jews, or Mohammedans from adminis- 
tering it throughout. 

There still linger among the usages of 
our governmental system some traces of the 
old concordat between Church and State. 
Houses of Congress, local legislatures, and 
courts of justice are opened with prayer. 
The Bible is more or less read in the public 
schools. Presidents and Governors issue an- 
nual Proclamations of Thanksgiving to Al- 
mighty God, Chaplains are appointed in the 
Army and Navy. On one of the less pre- 
cious of our coins are stamped the words, 
"In God we trust." 

Many persons take comfort from the 
thought that these things indicate a certain 
Christian complexion still clinging to the 
Government. 

It is a feeble solace. These vestiges of 
Christianity, as we may call them, are printed 
on the sand. The tide has only to crawl up 
a few inches further to wash them clean away. 
There is nothing in the theory of the Repub- 
lic that makes such usages an essential part 
of the national life. They rest for the most 
part upon the precarious tradition of colonial 
days ; or if on statute law, what is statute law 



THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 129 

but the creature of temporary majorities ? 
The moment popular opinion sets against 
them, all these relics of an established religion 
must go by the board. They are not the 
natural fruit of our system ; they are but re- 
minders of an old order of things that has 
passed away ; fossils imbedded in the rock on 
which the existing structure stands. One by 
one they will probably be chipped out and set 
aside as curiosities. 

If any one doubts the soundness of this 
reasoning, nothing is easier than to put it to 
a crucial test. Suppose it should come to 
pass, through the silent working of commer- 
cial and industrial causes, that the majority 
of the population in some one of our States 
should be unexpectedly found to be non- 
Christian, and not only non-Christian, but 
strongly anti-Christian. Such a supposition 
is certainly in these days an admissible one. 
Now, would the Governor of such a State, 
being himself a Christian, have any right to 
issue a proclamation calling upon the people 
to assemble on a given day and render thanks 
to God " through Jesus Christ our Lord " ? 
Or, to make the case still clearer, would he 
have the right to do this in the face of a pro- 
test signed by a majority of the voters of the 

9 



130 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

commonwealth ? No. The very first princi- 
ples of our social system forbid it. The Chris- 
tian minority would have to succumb in such 
a case without delay. We have no right to 
accept the law of majorities when it makes 
for us, and reject it when it makes against us. 
But it may be said that the magistrate, as a 
Christian, is bound to use his utmost efforts to 
bring the unbelieving community to a better 
mind. So he is bound, no doubt ; but it is as 
a private Christian citizen, and not as a mag- 
istrate, he must do it. He cannot convert 
the population by proclamation. Nay, nat- 
ural justice forbids that he should even try. 
Any other view of the case must of necessity 
land us in confusion. 

A year or two ago some very sanguine 
persons set on foot a movement which had for 
its object the incorporation into the national 
Constitution of an article recognizing the 
truth of Christianity. It is too late. The 
stars in their courses fight against so forlorn 
a hope. 

The truth is, theories of government re- 
duce themselves in the last analysis to two, 
the paternal and the utilitarian schemes. 1 1 

1 Socialism may perhaps claim to be reckoned a tertium 
quid, the fraternal in distinction from the paternal theory. 



THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 131 

Under the paternal system, a government is 
responsible for the well-being of the subject 
people in all respects, socially, educationally, 
religiously. The very name we give the the- 
ory tells the whole story. Government is 
the father of a family. The father knows 
the children's wants better than they know 
them themselves. He chooses for them their 
sports, their studies, their companions, their 
prayers. With such a theory of government 
as this an established religion is of course 
easily and naturally reconcilable. 

But it is otherwise with the utilitarian 
scheme. That credits the people governed 
with more robustness, treats them as grown 
men, and leaves it to them to decide for 
themselves what they will choose and what 
they will refuse. A utilitarian government 
professes to provide for the temporal well- 
being of all the governed. It professes no 
more. It cannot undertake to guarantee 
spiritual blessings, because people differ so 
very widely as to what those blessings are, 
and how they are to be secured. 

Now we in America have chosen the utili- 
tarian scheme. We have done it deliber- 
ately and with our eyes open. Unless we 
are prepared to agitate for revolution, and 



132 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

to tear our social order up by the roots, we 
must continue in the path to which we have 
plainly committed ourselves. 

Moreover, it is evident that the drift of the 
whole civilized world is in the same direc- 
tion as our own. If we determine to attempt 
stemming the current, we must count upon 
opposing not merely a national tendency, but 
an oecumenical one. Let us think twice be- 
fore we make up our minds that this is nec- 
essary. 

It may be that, in thus spending our 
strength upon a despairful effort at opposi- 
tion, we should really be found fighting against 
God. For aught we know, this world-wide 
movement may have caught its impulse from 
His hand, and may be working out His pur- 
poses. Why take it for granted in advance, 
that no good can possibly come out of a 
mighty change of which we do not see as 
yet even the beginning of the end ? What if 
the foundations of the American social system 
were laid by men who, as it is sometimes 
boastfully, and sometimes tauntingly, and 
sometimes mournfully declared were no Chris- 
tians ? An old restorer of temple ruins has 
reminded us that it is possible for our God to 
turn a "curse into a blessing." 1 The gifts 

1 Neh. xiii. 2. 



THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 133 

of unbelieving minds were well employed, if 
they aided, albeit unwittingly, to clear the 
ground for the better upbuilding of Christ's 
Church. 

And here lies just the point which the 
writer is aiming to bring out into distinctness. 
The ground is cleared, — cleared as it never 
has been before. The Church has, at last, 
full freedom to do her best. Some may think 
that it is with a great sum she has. obtained 
this freedom. Be it so, the freedom is hers : 
and for it she has to thank those who in the 
interest of secular government cut the knot 
of Church and State. Why, then, should we 
not as Christians frankly accept the fact that 
human government is everywhere renouncing 
its diviner functions, and see whether in this 
very abdication there be not a blessing hid ? 
We ought to have faith enough in our holy 
religion honestly to believe, and boldly to say, 
that all it need ask is " a fair field and no 
favor." This amount of concession, if jus- 
tice can ever be called concession, a utilitarian 
government cannot well refuse, and more 
than this we should be foolish to expect. 

Now let us not fear to face the very stern- 
est conclusions that can be fairly wrung out 
of our premises. It is true that no social the- 



134 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

ory is ever carried out in real life with rigor- 
ous logical consistency. But suppose this 
American theory should be so carried out to 
its utmost possible limit, what then ? Gov- 
ernment would become, in such an event, 
simply a machine. 

The functions of this machine would be the 
preservation of social order, the protection of 
life and property, the settlement of disputes, 
the punishment of crime, together with such 
matters as the coinage of money, the collec- 
tion of taxes and imposts, the granting of 
patent rights, and the transportation of the 
mails. But the more perfect you make this 
administrative mechanism, the wider does the 
gap become between Church and State. And 
it is well that it should be so. Mere living 
by clock-work cannot satisfy vthe aspirations 
of society, and therefore when men find that 
civil government has been reduced to clock- 
work and nothing else, they will look about 
them to see whether there be not some social 
organism capable of supplementing the defi- 
ciencies of the secular machine. This sense 
of want, this reaching after something better, 
it is the high and sacred duty of the Christian 
Church to meet. The food and drink that I 
are withheld at the Capitol must be sought for 



THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 135 

in the Temple. The more thoroughly the 
State secularizes human life, the more ear- 
nestly ought the Church to labor to spiritual- 
ize and ennoble it. 

Nor need there necessarily be the slightest 
conflict in this partitioning of functions. It 
may seem a terrible thing to degrade civil 
government to the level of a dead machine, 
but perhaps, when we have become accus- 
tomed to so regarding it, we shall cease to be 
shocked, for we shall then expect of govern- 
ment no more than we expect of a machine. 
Let it be understood that what the State 
leaves undone, it is the Church's recognized 
privilege to do. Under such circumstances 
we need not feel obliged to call the State 
atheistic any more than we call a Jacquard 
loom atheistic. The State is simply non- 
theistic, — that is all. 

But it may be said that civil government 
can never wholly free itself from a connec- 
tion with moral and. even religious questions, 
and that in this fact lies a fatal objection to 
the view here advanced. The adjustment of 
controversies between man and man, and the 
custody of the marriage relation, for exam- 
ple, must always, in the last resort, be left to 
the State. With limitations, this is true ; 



136 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

but it is hard to see how the truth of it at all 
damages the writer's argument. 

The State exercised high moral functions 
in the days of Pagan Rome, 1 and can exer- 
cise them again without assistance from the 
Church. There is an important distinction, 
often overlooked, between morality and holi- 
ness, between crime and sin. With morality 
and crime a non-Christian government is per- 
fectly competent to deal. Of sin and holi- 
ness such a government knows, and cares to 
know nothing at all. It is the duty of the 
Church to furnish the State with a high and 
pure standard of morality, and then to leave 
with the State the responsibility of conform- 
ing its action more or less closely to this stand- 
ard. If the Church has a Christianizing in- 
fluence on individual legislators and judges, 
the results will of course appear in Chris- 
tian legislation and Christian judicature. But 
even supposing, wliat is most unlikely, that 
the whole machinery of government were to 
fall into the hands of infidels, the administra- 
tion of justice and the enforcement of the laws 
need not necessarily cease. There would still 
be a social order, there would still be some 

1 See Leckey, History of European Morals, chap, ii., where 
this point is brought out with great distinctness. 



THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 137 

enforced standard, however meagre, of purity 
of life. 

But is the Christian religion, as we see it 
in America to-day, prepared to take up, or 
able to carry the heavy weight of responsi- 
bility our national theory of civil government 
throws down at its feet ? Is the Church of 
Christ so organized in this land as to be equal 
to the tremendous demand thus made upon 
her energies ? We want a large-roofed, firmly 
founded, spiritual dwelling-place, — a Home 
of God, a shelter for a mighty people. Can 
we have it ? Does such a fabric anywhere 
stand ready ? If it does, where is it ? If it 
does not, is there any hope? These are 
questions which a believer in " invisible 
Christianity " will set aside at once as super- 
fluous. " We have the desired structure al- 
ready," he will say, " in the united hearts of 
all true Christian people, of whatever name or 
sect." But those who hold to the need of 
the " one Body " as well as the power of the 
" one Spirit," will take another view of the 
matter. To them it will seem that Chris- 
tianity must be something more than a ghostly 
presence in the land, if it is to do the work 
mapped out for it. It must have hands and 
arms and feet. Between these members 



138 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

there must be harmony of movement, and 
over them unity of control. 

We are thus brought face to face with the 
American Problem, which is this : Given a 
country constituted like ours, how is the 
Church of Christ therein planted to achieve 
and to maintain her proper unity ? 

If we would handle the problem success- 
fully, we must first of all ascertain what, in 
mathematical language, are the exact " con- 
ditions " of it. That is to say, we must have 
a clear understanding both of the difficulties 
we may expect to encounter and of the helps 
upon which we have a right to count in our 
progress towards a solution. 

As to the difficulties, they are manifest 
enough, and numerous enough ; and if we 
thought we were working out the problem 
unaided, we might well be excused for call- 
ing them insuperable. 

In the first place, we have a population 
more strangely assorted than any other at 
present comprised within the limits of a sin- 
gle nationality. 1 

Representatives of almost all the peoples 
and the faiths of Europe are on the ground 
in force. " Parthians, and Medes, and Elani- 

1 With the possible exception of Russia. 



THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 139 

ites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia " can 
scarcely have been more unlike each other in 
most respects than are the English, Irish, 
German, African, Chinese, and Indian ele- 
ments of our motley census. 

Then, too, it must be remembered that the 
three tendencies of religious thought which 
have been already reviewed under the names 
of Romanism, Puritanism, and Liberalism, 
exist here not merely as tendencies, but as or- 
ganized powers, each zealously devoted to the 
w r ork of pushing its own interests. Hence, 
it happens that every effort after a genuine 
catholicity is almost sure to fall under the 
suspicion of being a covert attempt at denom- 
inational aggrandizement. 

But the conditions of the problem are not 
all of them discouraging. The believers in 
American Catholicity have food for hope. In 
weighing the significance of any given feature 
of national life, it is well to notice the counter- 
poise. That a marvellous diversity of origin 
distinguishes our population cannot be denied, 
but there is a fact of equal significance to be 
set over against it. Notwithstanding our 
strange mingling of bloods, there is one race 
that contrives to keep, and for obvious rea- 
sons always will keep the ascendency — the 



140 THE CHURCH-IDEA, 

Anglo-Saxon. Doubtless, the Anglo-Saxon 
mind has undergone, and in the future is 
destined still further to undergo, important 
changes here in America. But these changes 

© © 

have not been and will not be of such a kind 
as to alter the foundations of our national 
character. In our favorite virtues and our 
favorite vices, in our judgments and our 
tastes, we shall bear the impress of the An- 
glo-Saxon mint forever. The wars of the 
last century settled the question of ascendency 
in America : and the recent failure of an at- 
tempt to gain for the Latin races a fresh foot- 
hold on our soil has only put the seal to that 
settlement. 

Our very language bears a constant witness 
to this great fact of history. Were we really 
as a people the conglomerate race we are some- 
times supposed to be, we should at this mo- 
ment be speaking a miserable patois of Eng- 
glish, Spanish, and Dutch. As it is, English 
is spoken in this country by all classes of so- 
ciety with a far greater degree of uniformity, 
and with fewer provincialisms, than in Great 
Britain itself. It is not easy to overstate the 
importance of this fact that we are an English- 
speaking people. By this weapon of language 
alone AnMo-Saxon ideas will be able to hold 



THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 141 

America against all comers. Nor is it diffi- 
cult to see the bearing which this dominancy 
of race has upon our problem. The more 
thoroughly educated our people become, the 
more will they feel, through the medium of 
literature, the influence of those great minds 
that held England to her moorings in the day 
of the disruption of Western Christendom. 
This is not saying that Americans are des- 
tined eventually to conform to the present 
Anglican Church-system in its minutest de- 
tails. That the writer entertains no such 
foolish expectation, will, it is hoped, appear 
in due time. But what is seriously claimed 
is this: that certain leading ideas which in 
time past guided the men of Anglo-Saxon 
stock in the great controversy with Rome, 
will in time future guide the men in whose 
veins the same blood still runs. The Cath- 
olic Church of America will doubtless have 
something peculiarly American about its 
build ; but at the same time it will assuredly 
bear a closer resemblance to an English 
home than to either an Italian palazzo or a 
French chateau. 

There is another consideration, quite apart 
from this question of race, which must also 
be set down on the hopeful side in the dis- 



142 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

cussion of our problem. Americans are an 
intensely practical people. Endowed with a 
large allowance of common sense, fertile in 
expedients, and prompt in action, they are 
not apt to be long tolerant of a proved ab- 
surdity. Only let the religious portion of our 
community become once persuaded that it is 
a palpable absurdity to call the existing jum- 
ble of denominations, followings, and sects 
Christian unity, and they will work night and 
day, and pray day and night, until something 
better is brought to pass. It so happens that 
there has been a great deal in the experience 
of our national life during the past ten years 
to make transparent the folly of calling dis- 
union union, and disorder order. We have 
learned that for all practical purposes the 
unity of a people is dependent on the visible 
unity of its government. We have learned 
that the efficiency of an army is dependent on 
the thoroughness of its organization and the 
harmonious working of its parts. Now the 
Church is the People of God and the Army 
of Christ. It seems scarcely necessary to say 
more — the illustration enforces itself. 

Thus much for the statement of the prob- 
lem and its conditions. It remains to discuss 
the ways and means to a solution. This must 



THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. 143 

be reserved for another chapter. Meanwhile, 
one word of encouragement to those timid 
souls who can see nothing in the present state 
of things but chaos, and nothing in the future 
but despair. 

It is written in a certain place that once, 
when the earth was without form and void, 
and darkness was upon the face of the deep, 
the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the 
waters, and God said, " Let there be light." 
Can it be that the breath which could thus 
mould and shape a formless universe is unable 
to give unity and order to a great family of 
living souls ? Can it be that He who has 
promised His Spirit to the' Church, will not 
at the right moment speak the word and 
lighten our darkness as He lightened that ? 
It is the especial work of the Holy Spirit to 
draw unity out of confusion. Babel was 
man's work, but Pentecost was God's. Is it 
asking too much of Him who has bidden us 
ask what we will, if we pray that when the 
Church is " minished and brought low," God 
will at last bestow on her His inestimable gift 
of peace ? 



144 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 



VII. 

RECONCILIATION. 

When an intelligent man not wholly for- 
getful of the past of Christendom, nor wholly 
blind to its present estate, stands up in his 
place and solemnly says, " I believe in the 
Holy Catholic Church," wdiat does he mean ? 

Does he mean that in his judgment the 
particular household of faith to which he is 
attached is, in distinction from and to the ex- 
clusion of all other communions calling them- 
selves Christian, the sole depository and trus- 
tee of the blessings promised in Holy Scrip- 
ture to the Church ? He may mean this, 
and we must not too hastily refuse him his 
epithet of intelligent if he does. Some of the 
most cultivated and devout minds of modern 
times have given in their adhesion to this 
view, and we certainly shall not win them to 
any other by suggesting that in doing so they 
took leave of their senses. But is this ex- 
clusive interpretation of the language of the 
Creed, the only one consistent with honesty 



RECONCILIATION. 145 

and right reason ? Might not our intelligent 
worshipper say, and in nine cases out of ten 
would he not say, that his faith in the Holy 
Catholic Church was largely of the sort de- 
fined in the Epistle to the Hebrews as " the 
substance of things hoped for, the evidence 
of things not seen ? " If, upon making this 
confession, he were to be charged with pure 
idealism, with being a member of the Church 
of the Future, a visionary, an ecclesias- 
tical Quixote, he could answer, " Nay. I 
gladly admit that the Church has an histor- 
ical past as well as a possible future. Other 
foundation can no man lay than that is laid. 
I would not build upon a cloud. Only I must 
refuse to call the fabric perfect, so long as I 
see the ground strewn with stones evidently 
cut for the wall and waiting to be lifted into 
place. In saying, then, that I believe in the 
Holy Catholic Church, I confess to faith in a 
partly realized and partly unrealized plan." 1 

1 " Where," asks the English Koman Catholic, Edmund 
Ffoulkes, — "where, indeed, is the part of Christendom seri- 
ously purporting to call itself the Catholic Church in these 
days? Roman Catholic, Anglo-Catholic, Episcopal, Ortho- 
dox, or Presbyterian, all in their degree seem influenced by 
some hidden spell to abstain from arrogating to themselves, 
or attributing to each other, the epithet of* Catholic,' without 
qualification, as it is applied to the Church in the Creed." — 
The Church's Creed or the Crown's Creed? p. 15. 
10 



146 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

Whether this position be tenable or not, a 
strong argument in its favor might be drawn 
from a recent chapter in our national history. 
When in the darkest days of the long struggle 
between North and South, a man said, " I be- 
lieve in the Union, and am ready to die for 
it," was there anything necessarily contra- 
dictory or inherently absurd in his confession 
of faith? There certainly was a seeming 
contradiction and an apparent absurdity. Al- 
most all the outward and tangible evidences 
of unity had gone to the winds. In not a 
single State south of a certain boundary-line 
was the authority of the General Government 
acknowledged. Foreign critics looking on de- 
clared, almost with unanimity, that the Re- 
public was at an end. An English scholar 
issued the first volume of a ponderous w T ork 
on the "History of Federal Government 
from the Foundation of the Achaean League 
to the Disruption of the United States.' 
And yet, in the face of all this, hundreds 
of thousands were found saying, and say- 
ing honestly, " We believe in the Union. 
Were they mad ? To some they might 
have seemed so. The Union in which they 
declared their faith was certainly, for the 
time, most seriously broken. And yet, af- 
ter all, those men were something better 

I 



RECONCILIATION. 147 

than mere dreamers. They had a foundation 
for their confidence, and they knew it. All 
was not swept away. The ancient Consti- 
tution stood. The continuity of Republican 
Government survived. The capital too, with 
all its outward and visible symbols of legiti- 
macy, — the national archives, the halls of leg- 
islation, the seats of executive and administra- 
tive power, — this remained. In a word, there 
was a centre, a definite and tangible centre, 
around which to rally. And thus, at last, 
what had seemed to be a hoping against hope 
grew into fruition, and faith was justified. 

Is the cause of Church unity in this coun- 
try any more desperate to-day than was the 
cause of civil unity seven years ago ? 

In the earlier chapters of this book the ques- 
tion of Catholicity was discussed in abstract 
terms. This was necessary as a preliminary 
step to any satisfactory handling of practical 
issues. But we have now come down from 
the region of pure ideas into the denser air 
of every-day experience. We find ourselves 
face to face with the problem of Catholicity 
as it presents itself in this new world we call 
America. Here, if anywhere on earth, a 
Church of the Reconciliation ought to be 
among the things possible. Nowhere else can 



148 THE CHUKCH-IDEA. 

the constructive effort be made with so fair a 
promise of success. Religion is here, as we 
have seen, unhampered by any perilous alli- 
ance with the civil power ; the atoms of social 
life are in easy motion, ready to be crystallized 
into almost any conceivable form ; and if Chris- 
tian unity without coercion is anything better 
than an idle dream, there is nothing to forbid 
our bringing it, with God's help, to pass. 
While, therefore we seem to be narrowing the 
broad question of Catholicity when we thus 
fence it within national limits and subject it to 
local conditions, we are in reality only putting 
to the test principles which have an interest 
and an application as wide as the Christian 
world. 

First of all, then, who are to be recognized 
as forming what may be called the constit- 
uency of the Catholic Church of America ? 
Dare we give a narrower definition than St. 
Paul ? He said to his Galatian converts, 
" As many of you as have been baptized into 
Christ, have put on Christ." Baptism w r ith 
water, administered " in the Name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost," with the intention of engrafting the 
person baptized into the Christian Church, 
does in itself confer citizenship therein. So 



RECONCILIATION. 149 

the King decreed : so has the Realm received. 
The theology of Rome itself, strictly as it 
guards the pale of the Church, does not deny 
this privilege of birthright to any of the bap- 
tized, even though they may have received 
it from what is judged an heretical source. 1 

It may be objected that such a loose canon 
as this would turn the Church of the Recon- 
ciliation into an indiscriminate rabble. Thou- 
sands and thousands who care not a straw for 
religion could easily prove the simple fact of 
baptism. But it must be observed that we 
have not yet come to the question of disci- 
pline. It is one thing to have a right of 
membership in the Church, and quite another 
to be in the enjoyment of the privileges of 
communion. 2 The point under discussion 
now is what constitutes citizenship, not what 

1 Here is the official and definitive language of the Coun- 
cil of Trent: " Si quis dixerit Baptismum qui etiam datum ab 
haereticis in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, cum in- 
tentione faciendi quod facit Ecclesia, non esse verum Bap- 
tism, anathema sit." (Sess. Vll., Canon IX.) It is to be 
regretted that this anathema is sometimes in practice disre- 
garded by those whose consciences it was meant to bind. 

2 Nothing is more common than to find these two things 
confused in people's minds. Perhaps a majority of American 
Protestants grow up with the notion that admission to the 
Holy Communion constitutes membership of the Church, and 
yet the distinction between membership and communion is 
one that is absolutely essential to a clear understanding of the 
nature of Church life. 



150 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

constitutes good citizenship. We are con- 
sidering how from an abnormal, we are to get 
back into a normal state of things. 

Let ns recur to the analogy of our late 
civil war. The theory held by the General 
Government, from first to last, was that the 
people of the South, notwithstanding all that 
had happened, continued to be citizens. 
They were alienated citizens, citizens out of 
their right relations with their fellows, but cit- 
izens none the less, and as such to be treated. 
This was very different from the position taken 
towards the so-called State Organizations 
which these same alienated citizens had made. 
The supposed States were not recognized at 
all, or only in so far as certain amenities of 
war required it. In other words, while the 
right to construct new governments was de- 
nied, the inherent right of citizenship con- 
ferred by birth on American soil or by natu- 
ralization under American laws was admitted. 
By a similar reasoning it is perfectly consist- 
ent to deny the possibility of there being ten 
or twenty churches within the limits of a sin- 
gle nationality, while at the same time we 
admit that every individual member of these 
numerous societies has, in virtue of his bap- 
tism, a right of citizenship in the One Church 



RECONCILIATION. 151 

Catholic of Christ. If it be asked, — Why 
then fret ourselves about Church unity, when 
all the baptized are already members of the 
One Body ? the answer lies in another ques- 
tion equally to the point, — Why did we fret 
ourselves about national unity, when all, both 
North and South, were confessedly citizens 
by birth ? 

Starting from the broad vantage-ground 
thus given us by a generous definition of 
Church-membership, we have next to seek 
soihe one, well-understood, central position 
fitted to serve as a rallying-point for the scat- 
tered army of the Cross. The necessity of 
some definite centre of unity is demonstrable. 
The way to produce a beautiful effect in 
crystallization is to hang up by a thread in 
the liquid that contains the future crystal in 
solution a solid piece of stone or metal. To 
this, the minute particles, as they pass out of 
the state of solution, attach themselves ; and 
the final result is a marvellously symmetrical 
whole, in which the planes and points and 
angles seem all to have been arranged accord- 
ing to a preconceived idea. Similarly, when- 
ever any social organization has become dis- 
persed, or thrown into solution there is needed 
for its re-collection a firm core or nucleus about 



152 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

which the returning parts may group them- 
selves. To leave the chemical and to revert to 
the architectural figure, the first condition of 
the problem of American Catholicity is a de- 
finite foundation. Moreover, this foundation 
must have an historical character ; its roots 
must be driven deep down into the farthest 
past ; it cannot be the creature of to-day. It 
would be simply absurd to call a general con- 
vention of the baptized, and vote the Church 
of the Reconciliation into being. Political 
parties and benevolent societies and religious 
sects can be made in that way, but a great 
national Church never. Something stronger 
than an improvised platform of principles is 
needed to hold up the House of God. Her 
spires and turrets soar forever into the clear 
air of the Future. Her foundations are upon 
the holy hills. She is built into and upon 
the Past. 

Two religious systems, and only two, offer 
to the Christian people of this country an 
historical basis of unity. These are respec- 
tively the Anglican and the Roman Churches. 
Both trace their lineage to Apostolic times. 
Both are especially solicitous to retain the 
grand old epithet of " Catholic." Not a few 
thoughtful people are of opinion that between 



RECONCILIATION. 153 

these and a third power, namely, Religious 
Liberalism, the real battle of our future lies. 

But in this discussion about foundations, 
Liberalism may be cast out of the account ; 
for whatever else may be said in its behalf, 
nobody pretends that Liberalism has any his- 
torical basis of Church unity to propose. 

Here then are two churches, one of An- 
glo-Saxon, the other of Italian stock, each 
maintaining, and each maintaining truly, that 
it can offer to the American people an histor- 
ical basis of unity. It is by no means certain 
that the nation will choose either of * the two; 
but it is not hazarding much to say that if 
there is ever to be such a thing as a United 
Church of America, it,will rest either upon 
an Anglican or a Roman foundation. It 
would be difficult to exaggerate the impor- 
tance of the choice. To be sure, nothing is 
more common than for half-informed people 
to combine with ill-intentioned people in re- 
presenting that after all there is not much to 
choose between these two foundations. Very 
many worthy Christians regard Anglicanism 
as only a modified form of Romanism, — a 
Romanism robbed perhaps of some tinsel 
and glitter, and in a measure purified, but in 
its inner nature and essence Romanism still. 



154 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

And so, also, nothing is more common than 
to hear the case put as if there were really- 
only two instead of three alternatives be- 
tween which to choose. 

" Atheism or Ultramontanism," said La- 
mennais, and there are many who delight to 
echo the sentiment on this side of the Atlan- 
tic. But we are not Frenchmen ; and so 
long as we keep our eyes open, we shall not 
be snared by " the falsehood of extremes." 
When it has been proved that the Papal Su- 
premacy, the worship of the Blessed Virgin, 
the invocation of saints, tran substantial on, 
the denial of the cup to the laity, masses for 
the souls in purgatory, indulgences, and the 
confessional are matters of no moment, then, 
but not till then, shall we know that between 
the Roman and the Anglican positions there 
is not much to choose. 

The truth is, Anglicanism is the only form 
of Christianity of which Rome is seriously 
and thoroughly afraid. In the national 
Church of the Anglo-Saxon she sees a plant 
of hardy growth, and one which all her blasts 
do not suffice to wither. 

" We gave the Protestant religion five 
centuries to run," once said an ardent Roman 
Catholic ; " three of the five are over, and 



RECONCILIATION. - 155 

before the other two have passed, the whole 
thing will be reabsorbed." Yes ; three cen- 
turies have gone, but the Anglican Commun- 
ion has not gone, and will not go. It never 
was more vigorous in a spiritual sense than 
now. It stands, as Wellington's squares of 
infantry stood at Waterloo, firm, patient, 
dogged, if we must call it so, but true, — true 
as steel. 

We have come to a turning-point in the 
progress of our argument, to a question in 
which all the lines of thought upon which we 
have been moving meet. It is this : What 
are the essential, the absolutely essential feat- 
ures of the Anglican position ? When it is 
proposed to make Anglicanism the basis of a 
Church of the Reconciliation, it is above all 
things necessary to determine what Angli- 
canism pure and simple is. The word brings 
up before the eyes of some a flutter of sur- 
plices, a vision of village spires and cathedral 
towers, a somewhat stiff and stately company 
of deans, prebendaries, and choristers, and 
that is about all. But we greatly mistake if 
we imagine that the Anglican principle has 
no substantial existence apart from these ac- 
cessories. Indeed, it is only when we have 
stripped Anglicanism of the picturesque cos- 



156 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

tume which English life has thrown around 
it, that we can fairly study its anatomy, or 
understand its possibilities of power and 
adaptation. 

The Anglican principle and the Anglican 
system are two very different things. The 
writer does not favor attempting to foist the 
whole Anglican system upon America ; while 
yet he believes that the Anglican principle is 
America's best hope. 

At no time since the Reformation has the 
Church of England been in actual fact the 
spiritual home of the nation. A majority of 
the people of Great Britain are to-day with- 
out her pale. Could a system which has 
failed to secure comprehensiveness on its 
native soil, hope for any larger measure of 
success in a strange land ? 

But what if it can be shown that the An- 
glican system has failed in just so far as it has 
been untrue to the Anglican principle ? And 
what if it can be shown that here in America 
we have an opportunity to give that principle 
the only fair trial it has ever had ? 

The true Anglican position, like the City 
of God in the Apocalypse, may be said to lie 
foursquare. Honestly to accept that position 
is to accept, — 



RECONCILIATION. 157 

1st. The Holy Scriptures as the Word of 
God. 

2d. The Primitive Creeds as the Rule of 
Faith. 

3d. The two Sacraments ordained by 
Christ Himself. 

4th. The Episcopate as the key-stone of 
Governmental Unity. 

These four points, like the four famous for- 
tresses of Lombardy, make " the Quadrilat- 
eral " of pure Anglicanism. Within them 
the Church of the Reconciliation may stand 
secure. Because the English State-Church 
has muffled these first principles in a cloud 
of non-essentials, and has said to the people 
of the land, " Take all this or nothing," she 
mourns to-day the loss of half her children. 
Only by avoiding the like fatal error can the 
American branch of the Anglican Church 
hope to save herself from becoming in effect, 
whatever she may be in name, a sect. Only 
by a wise discrimination between what can 
and what cannot be conceded for the sake of 
unity, is unity attainable. We will make, 
therefore, the tour of the Quadrilateral. 

I. The Holy Scriptures as the Word of 
God. Anglicanism is happily pledged to no 
special philosophy of inspiration. " It seems 



158 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

pretty generally agreed among thoughtful 
men at present,' says Bishop Harold Browne, 
" that definite theories of inspiration are doubt- 
ful and dangerous." 1 A like wisdom framed 
the sentence, already once quoted in these 
papers, " Holy Scripture containeth all things 
necessary to salvation : so that whatsoever is 
not read therein, nor maybe proved thereby, 
is not to be required of any man that it should 
be believed as an article of the Faith, or be 
thought requisite or necessary to salvation." 2 
No doubt the living Bishop and the dead Re- 
former had very different polemical purposes 
in view when they wrote, but their words are 
in admirable accord, notwithstanding. Holy 
Scripture, according to the Anglican view, is 
the treasure-house of God's revealed truth. 
How far and in what precise manner the di- 
vine and the human elements coexist there, it 
is idle to surmise, because manifestly impossi- 
ble to determine. It is enough to know that 
in a sense peculiar and unique, differencing 
it from all other books, the Bible is God's 
word or message to us. The embassage of the 
Son of God is evidently the subject of the 
Scriptures. When the fact of this embassage 

1 Aids to Faith : Essay vii. § 12. 

2 XXXIX Articles. Art. vi. 



RECONCILIATION. 159 

has been once acknowledged, all difficulties 
• about inspiration fly to the winds. To the 
mind convinced that the " Word was made 
flesh," nothing seems more natural than that 
God should have provided and protected the 
memorial of so transcendent an event. 

But the Church must have some guaran- 
tee from its members that the cardinal truths 
enshrined in Holy Scripture are indeed re- 
ceived. Hence the necessity of a creed. It 
is simply trifling with words to say that the 
Scriptures are in themselves an all-sufficient 
creed. They are too voluminous to be 
grasped entire by any single mind, and even 
if they could be so grasped, they would not 
be a creed, for a creed is a summary of truths 
thought to be essential, and it has never been 
held that a knowledge of every minutest de- 
tail of Scripture is essential to the well-being 
of the soul. Scripture, like Nature, is a vast 
field of research. The creed is gathered out 
of Scripture, just as physical and chemical 
" laws," so called, are gathered out of Nature, 
that is, by the process of induction or the 
careful comparison of part with part. A man 
of science might as well say that Nature is 
his knowledge, as a Christian that Scripture is 
his creed. Scripture is, in its way, as inex- 



160 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

haustible as Nature. No man knows, or can 
know thoroughly, either the one or the other. 
Hence the dependence of the Church on — 
II. T/ie Primitive Creeds as the Rule of 
Faith. The principle of dogma is the corner- 
stone not only of Church life but of all social 
life whatever. Dogmas are simply first princi- 
ples, and without some agreement upon first 
principles the very beginnings of society are 
impossible. One Sunday morning, last Sum- 
mer, a North German fanatic fired a pistol- 
shot at the officiating clergyman in one of the 
principal churches of Berlin. He wished to put 
an affront on Christianity, and he selected a 
man against whom he bore no personal grudge 
as the representative of the hated system. 
When subsequently arraigned in court to an- 
swer to the charge of intended murder, the 
criminal pleaded Not Guilty, on the ground 
that the human will is the slave of circum- 
stances, and that he had only done what neces- 
sity compelled. Had the judge condescended 
to hold a metaphysical discussion with the ac- 
cused, it is just possible that the latter might 
have got the best of the argument. He cer- 
tainly could have cited not a few eminent 
philosophical authorities on his side. But in- 
stead of opening a debate, the judge promptly 



RECONCILIATION. 161 

acted upon the dogma, generally though not 
universally received, that killing, or attempt- 
ing to kill, is punishable, and sentenced the 
poor man to a term of twelve years' im- 
prisonment. 

What the axioms of morality are to the 
civil society, the State, certain primary beliefs 
or dogmas are to the religious society, the 
Church. It were as reasonable to ask the 
Church to dispense with the one, as the 
State to dispense with the other. Christian- 
ity, as a religion, rests upon a basis of alleged 
fact. Discredit this foundation, destroy peo- 
ple's confidence in its strength, and the whole 
fabric will tumble to the ground in a hun- 
dredth part of the time it has taken to rear 
it. When the Church renounces the prin- 
ciple of dogma she will simply be commit- 
ting suicide. 

But granting the necessity of a creed, w x hat 
ought to be the characteristic features of it ? 

Conspicuously these three, Brevity, Defi- 
niteness, Antiquity. 

The Creed of Christendom must be short. 
This is equally a necessity, although on dif- 
ferent grounds, for the learned and the un- 
learned. The least educated require a brief 
confession of faith, because it is unreasonable 
11 



162 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

to expect them to carry a long one in their 
minds. The most highly educated require 
the same, because, it is only upon a few points 
that any large number of trained intellects 
can ever be brought to an agreement. The 
more the human mind is cultivated, so much 
the greater power does it acquire of draw- 
ing subtle distinctions and defining delicate 
shades of difference. A creed that enters 
into a great number of minute particulars is 
a creed that invites opposition and makes 
conflict inevitable. 

The early Fathers and Doctors of the 
Christian Church seem to have been pro- 
foundly impressed with the soundness of this 
position. It was not for lack of ability to 
frame elaborate statements of theological 
truth that they refrained from doing so. Fa- 
miliar as they were with the refinements of 
the Greek philosophy, they might easily have 
contrived an intricate and highly subtilized 
creed had they wished. But their wisdom 
forbade it. They would not turn the Church 
of the Reconciliation into a Church of the 
Alienation, and so they kept their creed sim- 
ple and short. 

But as the years went on the passion for 
accumulating dogma grew strong. New con- 



RECONCILIATION. 163 

troversies provoked new definitions, and new 
definitions newer controversies. Finally, as 
the sun went down on the great battle of the 
Reformation, both the contending parties en- 
trenched themselves in very extended doctri- 
nal earth-works ; the Roman Catholics in the 
Decrees of the Council of Trent, and the 
Creed of Pope Pius IV. ; the Protestants in 
such symbolic documents as the Augsburg 
Confession, the Heidelberg Confession, the 
Westminster Confession, and the XXXIX 
Articles of the Church of England. The time 
has come to exchange these long-drawn creeds 
for the briefer rule of faith that satisfied the 
early Church. The exigencies of the six- 
teenth century may have demanded com- 
plexity, but the exigencies of the nineteenth 
demand simplicity. The Church is in the 
heat of a tremendous conflict, and her great 
need is concentration of force. We may 
learn a lesson in this matter from the striking 
change that has, of late years, come over the 
methods of naval warfare. Contrast an old- 
fashioned line-of-battle ship, a three-decker 
carrying seventy-five or a hundred guns, such 
as you might see in a picture of La Hogue or 
Trafalgar, and one of our modern iron-clads, 
with its two or four or six ponderous pieces 



164 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

of ordnance. To a wholly inexperienced eye, 
looking at the two in open ocean, it would 
seem as if there could be no comparison in 
point of power. How can that low-lying, 
unpretentious, scantly-armed ship stand for a 
moment against the huge Queen of the Sea, 
with her over-hanging walls of oak, her triple 
row of cannon, her eight hundred men ? 
But power is with the few, in this case. 
One single shot from the less conspicuous but 
compacter ship, will, if well directed, do more 
execution than a whole broadside from its 
many- mouthed opponent. The moral of the 
fable is not far to seek. The great doctrinal 
need of our times may be compressed into a 
single maxim, Heavy guns and few. 

But let both parts of the maxim be kept 
equally in mind. It is folly to diminish the 
number of the guns unless at the same time we 
increase the weight of the metal. The writer 
would by no means favor holding to revealed 
truth with a loose grasp. Dogma, well-de- 
fined, sharply-cut dogma, is, as has been 
already said, essential to the very existence 
of the Church, and just in proportion to the 
fewness of the required articles of faith ought 
to be their distinctness. The great practi- 
tioners have been those who have cured dis- 



RECONCILIATION. 165 

eases with few remedies, but they would not 
have been great practitioners had they used 
no remedies at all. Special sins are but the 
outcropping fruits of one all-pervasive sick- 
ness of the soul. We do not need as many 
medicines as there are sins to heal, but we 
do need such few remedies as have always 
proved themselves able to reach the underly- 
ing cause of the complaint. 

Definiteness, then, is a second requisite of 
the universal creed, as indeed it may be 
called the first requisite in the religious think- 
ing of our times. There is far too much 
haze, not to say fog, in the air for either com- 
fort or health. Men crave certainty on some 
points, and they are not satisfied until they 
have it. And yet how much of the prevalent 
teaching leaves those who receive it shiver- 
ing in the mists that cling about the moun- 
tain's sides, instead of leading them up into 
the sharp but clear air of the summit. The 
religious mind of to-day expects to be told, and 
is willing to be told, that there are few things 
it can know ; but what saddens it and sickens 
it is to receive the message that there is noth- 
ing about God or heaven it can know for 
certain. By all means, what we do hold, let 
us hold fast. 



166 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

The only other needful characteristic of 
a universal Christian creed, besides brevity 
and precision, is the venerableness that comes 
with age. It is sometimes rashly said that 
reverence for authority is gradually dying out 
of the world altogether. Much that we see 
in contemporary life and manners would seem 
to give color to the gloomy prophecy. But 
it cannot be. Human nature puts on a va- 
riety of liveries in passing from one service 
to another, but itself it cannot change : and 
until human nature has undergone a radical 
revolution, making it other than it is, there 
need be no serious fear that the sense of rev- 
erence for what is venerable will ever wholly 
cease to show itself among men. The awe 
we feel in looking on an ancient building, the 
attachment we have for an old home, the pe- 
culiar value we set upon an early and tried 
friendship, these all bear witness to our in- 
stinctive preference for what seems to be last- 
ing over what we know to be transient. In 
superficial matters we are fond of variety and 
newness, but in all that most deeply affects 
the real interests of life we value permanence, 
and whatever seems to prove or promise per- 
manence. A creed that is to commend it* 
self to the confidence, and not merelv to the 



RECONCILIATION. 167 

admiration of Christendom, must come backed 
by the authority of the ages. The wisest 
theologian alive cannot make such a creed to 
order. No assembly of divines, however au- 
gust, can compile it to-day. It must be 
found, if found at all, among the inherited 
treasures of the Church of God. 

Can it be found ? Anglicanism says, Yes. 

The " Primitive Creeds " are the two pop- 
ularly called " the Apostles' Creed " and " the 
Nicene Creed." The Apostles' Creed is of 
unknown antiquity. It is one among various 
similar versions of " the form of sound words " 
which were in currency among the early 
Christians. 

The Nicene Creed is that statement of re- 
ceived faith which was drawn up by the as- 
sembled Bishops of the whole Church, as soon 
as the cessation of persecutions made it possi- 
ble for them to come together and bear wit- 
ness to those things which had been " most 
surely believed " from the beginning. 1 These 

1 The date of the Council of Nice was A. d. 325. The clos- 
ing sentences of the Creed, from the clause " I believe in the 
Holy Ghost '' (with the exception of the words "and the 
Son"), were added at the Council of Constantinople a. d. 381. 
Of the Creed thus completed the Fourth General Council (a. 
d. 451) decreed that it was " lawful for nobody to propose, that 
is, compile, put together, hold, or teach others another faith. 
Those who dared either to put together another faith, or pro- 



168 THE CHUECH-IDEA. 

Bishops, it is to be observed, did not claim the 
power of making dogma. They only set the 
seal of their testimony on what they asserted 
to have been always received in the Chris- 
tian communities they severally represented. 
In these Creeds, or rather in this Creed, 
for the second is only a restatement of what 
is contained by implication in the first, we 
find centred all three of the attributes re- 
quired, — brevity, definiteness, and venerable 
authority. Both Creeds long antedate the 

duce, teach, or deliver another symbol to any desirous of re- 
turning to a knowledge of the truth from Hellenism, Juda- 
ism, or any heresy whatsoever, were, if bishops or clergy, to 
be deposed; if laymen, to be anathematized." — Canon of 
Chalcedon, as quoted by Ffoulkes, The Church's Creed and 
the Crown" 1 '& Creed? p. 5. 

Near the end of his pamphlet the same writer says, 
" Thirdly, what is of infinitely more importance to Christians 
generally, desirous of living in peace and charity with their 
brethren all the world over, no profession of faith would be re- 
quired from any seeking to be admitted to communion to any 
Church, but the Nicene Creed, according to the solemn import 
of the Canon with which we commenced. When it was 
passed, all the modern controversies on grace had been antic- 
ipated by the followers of Pelagius, and there had been ques- 
tions raised about the sacraments and rules of the Church sim- 
ilar to these amongst which we live. And sfill the language 
of that Canon is most emphatic : — ' Those coming over from 
whatsoever heresy to the communion of the Church, are to be 
made to subscribe to the Xicene Creed and no other.' .... 
Plain Christians might therefore traverse the world with no 
other passport to the Sacraments of the Church in all lands 
than the Nicene Creed." — Ibid. p. 65. 



RECONCILIATION. 169 

rise of the Papal power, and the origin of the 
superstitious beliefs and usages against which 
the Reformation was a protest. Hooker 
speaks of the first as " that brief confession 
of faith which hath been always a badge of 
the Church, a mark whereby to discern Chris- 
tian men from infidels and Jews." 1 

Of the second it may be said that it differs 
from the first chiefly in the more marked 
exactness of its language with regard to the 
Sonship of our Lord Jesus Christ. A truth 
which, to quote Hooker again, is " contained, 
but not opened in the former creed," is here 
set forth in unmistakable terms. It would 
seem as if the words " His only Son our Lord, 
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost," must 
be just as decisive of Christ's true divinity as 
the words that follow, " Born of the Virgin 
Mary, .... suffered, .... was 
crucified, dead and buried," are decisive of 
His true humanity. But since there were 
some who doubted, the Nicene Fathers deter- 
mined so to define the dogma of the Incarna- 
tion as to make it perfectly clear what they 
held to be the immemorial belief of the 
Church. Critics who stand, by their own 
confession, quite beyond the pale of Chris- 

1 Ecclesiastical Polity, Book v. chap. xlii. § 2. 



170 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

tianity have no difficulty in seeing that this 
dogma is really what distinguishes the Church 
from Judaism and Islam. Certainly we who 
stand within the pale ought to be thankful 
for a Creed which enunciates the central 
truth of our religion with a distinctness and 
emphasis that fifteen hundred years of con- 
troversy have not sufficed to blur. If to sur- 
render the more technical language of Ni- 
csea is to acknowledge that the Apostles' 
Creed leaves the Divinity of our Lord an open 
question, then let us cling to the Nicene Creed 
while the world stands ; for between Arianism 
and Humanitarianism there is no stopping- 
place, and between Humanitarianism and 
Christianity there can be no peace. 

But some parts of the Nicene Creed are 
confessedly couched in language that is strictly 
theological, and by the unlearned hard to be 
understood. Need a formal assent to these 
propositions be demanded of all Christian 
people indiscriminately as a condition of com- 
munion ? Anglicanism says, and always has 
said, No. If there be any doubt in particular 
instances as to whether the Apostles' Creed 
is received in its true sense, then let inquiry 
be made and instruction given. But let not 
a humble-minded child of God be turned away 



EECONCILIATION. 171 

from the Holy Table because the philosoph- 
ical and theological bearings of the term " one 
substance " are not clearly understood. 

In the Church of the Reconciliation no more 
ought to be demanded of the laity, on the 
score of theology, than an affirmative answer 
to the question, " Dost thou believe all the 
articles of the Christian Faith as contained in 
the Apostles' Creed ? " 1 and no more ought 
to be demanded of the clergy than assent to 
the same articles of faith as they are more ex- 
actly stated and more fully expanded in the 
Nicene Creed. 

It may be easily foreseen that this avowal 
will call forth two sorts of criticism, the one 
from those who think the concession too little, 
the other from those who think the latitude 
too great. " Why make any distinction be- 
tween the faith of clergy and laity?" asks a 
friend on the left. " You do not seriously 
mean that you w 7 ould relinquish the XXXIX 
Articles ! " exclaims with undisguised horror 
another friend on the right. Let us deal 
with one critic at a time. 

A distinction between the theological 
knowledge required of a clergyman and that 
required of a layman is reasonable, for the 

1 Booh of Common Prayer, Office of Holy Baptism. 



172 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

same reason that a physician is expected to 
have a more intimate familiarity with the 
laws of health than his patients have. There 
are very many interesting analogies between 
the two healing professions, and those charged 
with the cure (or care) of bodies have much 
in common with those charged with the cure 
of souls. But in no point is the resemblance 
more suggestive than where it touches this 
question of doctrinal knowledge. Everybody, 
educated or uneducated, is bound to have 
some acquaintance with what we may call 
practical physiology, the laws of temperance, 
sleep, and exercise. Without this knowledge 
he cannot live a healthy life. But a man ex- 
pects of his physician something more than 
this. He does not demand that he shall be 
in general a healthier person than himself, 
but he does demand that he shall have a 
clearer insight into the causes of disease, 
and a greater familiarity with the treatment 
of it. 

Probably the catholic creed of medicine, 
namely, such a statement of physiological prin- 
ciples as all well-educated physicians, the 
world over, would be willing conjointly to 
subscribe, bears about the same proportion in 
point of length to the every-day creed by 



RECONCILIATION. 1 73 

which men eat and drink and sleep, that the 
Nicene bears to the simpler Apostolic formu- 
lary. We cannot afford to dispense either with 
the science of the professional, or with the 
plain knowledge of the non-professional mind. 

Turning now to the other critic, the writer 
would say in advance that he has personally 
no quarrel with the contents of the XXXIX 
Articles. 

Any one who believes the Scriptures to be 
the Word of God, and who accepts the Primi- 
tive Creeds and the Episcopate, must be in- 
deed unreasonable, if with a choice between 
Bishops Burnet, Beveridge, Browne and 
Forbes as expounders, 1 he cannot assent to 
the Articles. 

But the very fact that it has been found 
necessary under the Anglican System (notice 
the word is " system" not " principle ") to 
allow the various standards of interpretation 
represented by the names just quoted, is in it- 
self a strong argument against making acqui- 
escence in so extended a confession of faith a 
prerequisite of ordination. 2 

1 Not to mention Tract 90, which is now claimed by a not 
inconsiderable body of Anglican Churchmen as a permissible 
commentary upon those Articles which it touches. See Dr. 
Pusey's Eirenicon, Part i. p. 30. 
2 See Appendix, Note C. 



174 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

So long as men continue to use their minds 
upon the subject of religion, there will always 
be " systems of theology " and " bodies of 
divinity." The scientific mind is never con- 
tented till it has arranged and codified its 
knowledge. Were the XXXIX Articles to be 
obliterated to-morrow, men would still be clas- 
sified as Calvinists, Semi-Calvinists, and Ar- 
minians, as Lutherans and Zuinglians, as 
Realists and Nominalists. Not until you 
have shut up such fountains as the " Summa 
Theologian " of Aquinas on the one hand, and 
the "Institutes " of Calvin on the other, can 
you expect the minds of men to run in wholly 
new channels of thought. But the question 
arises, What is the use of a formulary which 
appears upon its face to present one system of 
theology, but is practically made to cover 
three or four ? Can we not do quite as well 
without it ? Should we not be logically more 
consistent, and historically more Catholic, 
were we to return to the old standard of the 
Nicene Faith, and exact no more, no less, in 
the way of doctrinal assent from the clergy of 
the Church, than was exacted fifteen hundred 
years ago? 

But it may be said that the Nicene Creed, 
if made the sole standard of orthodoxy, 



RECONCILIATION. 175 

would be subject to an even greater latitude 
of interpretation than the Articles now are. 
This is unlikely, for the reason that the Ni- 
cene Creed was not framed with a view to 
ambiguity. Doubtless there would be in a 
Church where only this Creed were required, 
very many schools of thought, more or less 
divergent ; but certainly no one can pretend 
that the Nicene Creed leaves the doctrine 
of the Incarnation in the same plight that 
the Seventeenth Article leaves the doctrine 
of " Predestination and Election." Men 
may hold very irreconcilable views with re- 
gard to 

"Fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute," 

and yet subscribe the Article. They cannot 
hold seriously conflicting views with regard to 
the nature of our Lord Jesus Christ, and sub- 
scribe the Creed. Now the Incarnation is 
the fountain-head of Christian truth. If w r e 
believe that, we are certain to believe much 
more. A confession that u Jesus Christ is 
come in the flesh " enforces a recognition of 
the sad necessity that brought Him here. 
Faith in Him as our only Saviour flows nat- 
urally out of our faith in Him as our God. 
While we are loyal to this dogma, there is 
no danger from the side of unbelief, nor so 



176 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

long as we are also loyal to Holy Scripture is 
there danger from the side of superstition. 

But a positive advantage that would come 
from relegating the Articles to their proper 
place among other similar summaries of the- 
ological opinion is this : a serious stumbling- 
block would be taken out of the path of 
those who cannot approve in principle of so 
large a body of dogmatic statement. Why, 
for example, should a valuable man of great 
attainments in scholarship and piety be de- 
barred the ministry of the Holy Catholic 
Church, because, while accepting ex animo 
the Xicene Creed, he happens to hold to a 
literal interpretation of our Lord's words, 
" Swear not at all," and cannot honestly as- 
sent to "Art, XXXIX. Of a Christian 
Man's Oath"? 1 

Let the XXXIX Articles have all the 
respect that is due to their origin and history, 
and all the authority that attaches to similar 
symbolic documents of their era. Only let 
them not continue to be considered, what 
they have never been in reality, one of the 
essentials of the Anglican position. 2 

i See Appendix, Xote D. 

2 The writer has left untouched the interesting question as 
to the present binding authority of the XXXIX Articles upon 
the clergy of the Protectant Episcopal Church. For light 



RECONCILIATION. 177 

III. The Two Sacraments. A marked 
peculiarity of the Christian religion is the 
fact that while intensely spiritual in its mo- 
tives and aims, it does not loose itself wholly 
from the material world. Socrates bequeathed 
to his disciples a doctrine, and nothing more. 
Christ gave His people a doctrine clothed. 
He linked the inner to the outer world, and 
asserted His kingship over both. The pen- 
dulum of philosophy swings ceaselessly be- 
tween the extreme of spiritualism and the 
extreme of materialism. A greater than the 
philosophers brought into the world a religion 
which is neither a ghost nor a corpse, but a 
living body dwelt in by a living soul. 

The Two Sacraments of Christ's appoint- 
ment image forth to the eye His two all-com- 
prehensive sayings, " Come unto Me," 
" Abide in Me." The one is the Sacrament 
of Approach, the other the Sacrament of Con- 
tinuance. Baptism answers to the grafting 
of the branch ; Holy Communion to the in- 

upon this point, he would refer the theological reader to the 
Journals of the early General Conventions. It is a curious 
fact that during the first sixteen years of our separate exist- 
ence as a Church, the XXXIX Articles formed no part of the 
American Book of Common Prayer. Bishop White, even 
while defending the Articles ( Memoirs^ p. 240), did "not ar- 
rogate to them perpetuity." 
12 



178 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

flux of the nourishing juices that keep the 
graft alive. 

Thus the sacraments are a constant safe- 
guard against the clanger of theologizing in 
entire forgetfulness that we are in the body 
and on the earth, a danger which would seem 
in advance improbable enough, but which 
history teaches to be real. And conversely 
it is true that when men have made up their 
minds that Christianity is only one mode of 
speculative thought, a philosophy in disguise, 
their very first step is to disown the sacra- 
ments. 

But the peculiar claim of the sacraments to 
rank as pledges of unity is this, that they are 
among the few undisputed legacies of the 
Apostolical age. Upon whatever other points 
Christians may differ, they are agreed that 
these two simple rites, Baptism and the Sup- 
per of our Lord, have been in use in the 
Church since the beginning. Even those 
who, like the members of the Society of 
Friends, reject the sacraments altogether, do 
so upon the ground that Christians have no 
longer need of such external helps, not upon 
the ground that the rites themselves are of 
post-apostolic origin. But without the sacra- 
ments the Church becomes a phantasm, and 



RECONCILIATION. 179 

it is impossible to frame any scheme of recon- 
ciliation that shall dispense with these insti- 
tutes of Christ's appointment, or leave the 
use of them optional with individual believers. 
The sacramental element is an integral portion 
of the Church-Idea, and cannot be cut away 
with safety. But Anglicanism, while per- 
fectly clear upon this point of the essential 
character of the sacraments, is not pledged to 
any particular theory of their operation. As 
in the matter of the inspiration of the Holy 
Scriptures, so here, it is the fact, and not the 
philosophy of the fact, that Anglicanism aims 
to grasp. Grant first that the sacraments are 
of perpetual and binding obligation, and sec- 
ondly that they are channels of blessing to 
the Church, and the Anglican principle is sat- 
isfied. A transcendental theory about the 
way and means whereby the Spirit through 
Baptism brings us into God's Household, or 
through Holy Communion feeds us on the 
Body and Blood of Christ, is not required. 

Hence it would seem to be a hardship for 
men to be driven into schism, or kept in 
schism, because their consciences are offended 
by certain phrases, other than the New Tes- 
tament formula, employed in the administra- 
tion of Baptism. Whatever may be our es- 



180 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

timate of the importance of sacramental priv- 
ileges, there can be no question that the 
validity of Baptism lodges in the act itself, not 
in the forms of words that may be employed 
before or after the act. The higher the view 
we take of the dignity of the sacrament, the 
clearer does this point become, so that, indeed, 
the unreasonableness of exacting conformity 
to one particular devotional formulary of 
Baptism, as a condition precedent of Church 
unity, may be said to be parallel to the unrea- 
sonableness of demanding that any one mode 
of administering the sacrament, such as im- 
mersion, trine immersion, aspersion, or affu- 
sion, shall be held valid, to the exclusion of all 
others. 

But a far more serious difficulty than this 
besets the question of the relation of Baptism 
to Church Unity. It is a tenet of one of the 
largest and most influential of the Christian 
denominations of America that little children, 
unable to speak for themselves, cannot right- 
fully be made members of the Church in Holy 
Baptism, or treated during their early years as 
Christian children. Here is a point of differ- 
ence which obviously does not admit of com- 
promise. To blur over the issue is simply to 
cry peace where there is no such thing. The 



RECONCILIATION. 181 

theory that the Church is a community which 
in great measure propagates itself by Chris- 
tian marriage, and preserves itself by Chris- 
tian nurture, cannot possibly be reconciled 
with the theory that the Church can grow 
only by adult conversions from an unbelieving 
world. 1 

It would be clearly unwise to open and 
discuss in this connection the whole baptismal 
controversy. Still, it cannot be amiss to call 
attention to certain misapprehensions some- 
times entertained, the removal of which may 
make the way of reconciliation easier. 

The Church in receiving little children to 
Holy Baptism, does not, as it is often supposed 
she does, guarantee to them unconditionally 
the heritages of eternal life. She simply re- 
ceives them, as our Lord received them, with 
a blessing. She treats them as members of 
a pardoned family, pardoned for Christ's sake, 
and needing to be taught both the happiness 
and the responsibility of their high privilege. 

1 The writer trusts that he has done the Baptist theology no 
injustice in these sentences. He does not intend to assert, 
what is practically untrue (although often alleged), that the 
Baptist system attaches absolutely no value to Christian nur- 
ture, but rather that Christian nurture is not in that system 
the prominent feature, the wholly indispensable constituent, 
that it is in Anglicanism. 



182 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

She says, It cannot be that the lambs alone, 
of all the Flock, are to be refused the shelter 
of the Fold. It cannot be that in the School 
of Christ grown people are the only learners. 
And so she welcomes the little ones, promises 
them all the help that love, and care, and ten- 
derness, and holy discipline can give, and then 
expects them, w T hen the right time comes, 
" with their own mouth and consent, openly 
before the Church " to ratify and confirm 
what was done for them at the start. In de- 
fault of such a personal acknowledgment, 
the privileges of Baptism become practically 
forfeit and outlawed, for only those who with 
their own lips have confessed the faith are 
received to the privileges of communion. 

When the first Napoleon wished to signify 
his hope and his ambition for his only child, 
he took him in his arms w T hile yet an infant, 
and holding him up before the assembled 
legions of the Old Guard, caused him to be 
declared and made a member of that veteran 
corps. There was a profound meaning in 
the act. Thenceforth the destiny of the baby 
king was, humanly speaking, determined. He 
was to be a soldier, as his father had been 
before him, and from that moment the soldier 
life was to begin. Play, dress, studies, com- 



RECONCILIATION. 183 

panionships, all were to be chosen with this 
definite future in view. True, the child ap- 
preciated nothing of the solemnity and import 
of the ceremony. His eyes and thoughts 
dwelt only on the burnished arms, the gayly 
colored trappings, the waving banners. Nev- 
ertheless, that was a moment of crisis for the 
little King of Rome. In spite of his uncon- 
sciousness, a thing was done for him he never 
wholly could undo. 

The Church, just now likened to a family 
and a school, has also its resemblance to an 
army. The leader is invisible, the weapons 
are not carnal, the campaign is against a spir- 
itual enemy, and yet the sacramental host is 
no shadowy, unsubstantial thing, but real. To 
enroll children in this army is to undertake 
that from the beginning of their conscious life 
they shall be taught loyalty, and exercised in 
the use of arms. Unlike Napoleon's boy, the 
baptized child may claim the promise of God's 
blessing on his warfare to the end. 

But the real ground of objection to the 
Church-membership of little children is to be 
sought in that view of Christianity which has 
been already criticised under the name of 
Puritanism. The issue is between the inclu- 
sive and the exclusive theories of the nature 



184 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

of the Church. If, as the Puritan maintains, 
only a portion of the human race is salvable, 
and therefore only certain individual mem- 
bers of any given community are to be ac- 
counted subjects of Divine grace, then it is a 
manifest impiety to assert indiscriminately of 
all infants brought to Baptism that they are 
therein made members of Christ, children 
of God, and inheritors of the Kingdom of 
Heaven. But the Church-Idea presupposes 
a whole world redeemed, — not necessarily a 
whole world finally saved, — rather a whole 
world put in the w r ay of salvation. We may 
not presume to anticipate the awards of the 
Judge. We know not how many or how few 
are to inherit eternal life. Christ discouraged 
inquiries upon that head. But this we do 
know, that forgiveness may be had to-day by 
all who care to claim it. We come into the 
world the members of a guilty, but at the 
same time a pardoned race. To convince us 
of the guilt, to make us appreciate the pardon, 
this is the conjoint work of the Spirit and the 
Bride. 

In a word, the Church treats redemption 
as a universal fact, and Baptism as a univer- 
sal privilege. To bring little children to Bap- 
tism is, in the Church's view, just as reason- 



RECONCILIATION. 185 

able and natural a thing as for a man who has 
been in rebellion to claim for his family as well 
as for himself the benefits of a published am- 
nesty. 

When God made His covenant with Abra- 
ham, and founded the old Jewish Church, He 
gave an express command that the little chil- 
dren should be taken into it. Is it a fair in- 
ference from the silence of the New Testa- 
ment that under the more generous provis- 
ion of Christ's better covenant the little chil- 
dren are to be shut out ? On the contrary, 
may we not argue that if the Christian Church 
had been meant to differ from the Jewish in 
so important a regard, we should have been 
told so, and that therefore the absence of the 
prohibition amounts virtually to a positive 
command ? 

It is a curious circumstance that the oppo- 
sition to infant Church-membership comes 
from two sources as diverse and opposite as 
they well can be. On the one hand it is 
said, You must not bring up children as 
Christians, because you have no right to 
interfere with the spontaneous development 
of their religious natures. You must wait 
and let them decide for themselves, as if the 
question w r ere opened for the first time, 



186 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

whether they will choose the religion of the 
Bible or some other religion. On the other 
hand it is said, You must not bring up chil- 
dren as Christians, because they cannot pos- 
sibly be Christians until they have passed 
through such religious experiences as are 
only possible to persons of some maturity 
of character and knowledge of the world. 
They must sin consciously, and repent con- 
sciously, and consciously be justified, before 
you have any right to call them Christians. 
But the objection, from whichever side it 
comes, is amply met by Scripture and by 
common sense ; Scripture saying in a very 
positive way, " Train up a child in the way 
he should go, and when he is old he will not 
depart from it ; " common sense assuring us 
that it is vain to say we will not educate our 
children religiously, since it is quite certain 
that if we do not educate them into Chris- 
tianity, we educate them out of it. " Free 
Religion " can ask no better field for its ma- 
noeuvres than an unbaptized community. 
At any rate, one thing is certain : the inclu- 
sive and the exclusive theories of Church 
life cannot both be true. They part com- 
pany at this initial point of Baptism, but 
their divergence does not end here. If one 



RECONCILIATION. 187 

is right, the other is wrong. It is for this 
nation to choose between the two. 

Turning now from the Sacrament of birth 
to the Sacrament of nourishment, we have to 
ask what place the Holy Communion ought 
to occupy in the Church of the Reconcilia- 
tion. Certainly no subordinate rank can 
well be assigned to the only habitual obser- 
vance our Lord by express command en- 
joined upon all the faithful. It is a wonder- 
ful thought that while empires have had 
time to be born and live and die, and whole 
civilizations have changed their face, this 
touching tradition has been kept, that on the 
night in which He was betrayed, " He took 
bread, and when He had given thanks, He 
brake it, and gave it to His disciples, saying, 
Take, eat, this is My body which is given 
for you. Do this in remembrance of Me." 
And this in remembrance of Him have ten 
thousand times ten thousand and thousands 
of thousands done during the long tract of 
years across which we look backward to that 
night. 

Weighing the fact apart from its religious 
associations and as a mere phenomenon of 
history, is it not perfectly marvellous that so 
slender a plant should have survived the 



188 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 






storms and floods that have swept many an- 
other seemingly more stoutly rooted growtn 
from off the earth ? It cannot be matter 
of surprise that Christians should love to re- 
gard an observance thus hallowed as being 
their supreme act of worship. 

In denning the standard of fitness for the 
Holy Communion, the Anglican principle de- 
mands a close adherence to the language f 
Scripture, and a careful avoidance of the two 
extremes of harshness and laxity. It refuses 
to fence the Sacrament with the mechan- 
ical contrivance of the Confessional, a thing 
unknown to Apostolical times. On the other 
hand, it guards against degrading the sa- 
cred feast to the level of a mere sentimental 
observance, in which any one who feels the 
momentary impulse may take part. "But 
let a 'man examine himself, and so let him eat 
of that bread and drink of that cup" " Draw 
near, ye who do truly and earnestly repent 
you of your sins, and are in love and charity 
with your neighbors, and intend to lead a new 
life, following the commandments of God, and 
'walking from henceforth in Sis holy ways ; 
draw near with faith, and take this holy Sac- 
rament to your comfort.'' Such are the sim- 
ple but searching tests of fitness by which 



KECONCILIATION. 189 

the Anglican principle is willing to abide. 
They do not repel from the Lord's Table 
those whose very humility constitutes their 
best claim to a place there ; nor yet do they 
make light of those important requisites — 
faith, penitence, and charity, — without which 
no man may worthily partake. 

The Holy Communion ought to be, more 
than it anywhere is at present, a guarantee 
of purity of character. The worst deficiency 
of American religion to-day is the want of a 
warmer interest in that old-fashioned occu- 
pation, holy living. There is scarcely a con- 
gregation in the land in which every one 
of the Ten Commandments is not literally 
broken. Give us back something of the 
" primitive discipline " of which the English 
Prayer-book says that its restoration is " much 
to be wished," rather than allow the World 
utterly to swamp the Church. It were a fa- 
tal objection to the " inclusive theory " of the 
Kingdom, could it be proved to involve a 
universal tolerance of sin. While we guard 
against the narrowness of the Puritan, and 
refrain from bringing in our brother guilty in 
things indifferent, we have need to see to it 
that we maintain a high standard in things 
not indifferent, and keep God's pearls for 
other than the swine. 



190 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

IV. The Episcopate as the Key-stone of 
Governmental Unity. 

The Anglican principle insists upon gov- 
ernmental unity as an essential condition of 
oneness in the Church. Let us look at the 
reasons for this. 

Headship is God's law. Double and triple 
headed creatures are monsters that exist only 
in fiction, or, if born, are only born to die. 
From its fountain in the bosom of the Holy 
Trinity, this principle of headship flows 
downward through all the ranges of created 
life. We find it in the constitution of the 
Family, recent social theories to the contrary 
notwithstanding. We find it in the consti- 
tution of the State, which, when it falls into 
anarchy, (or headlessness,) ceases to be. We 
find it in the constitution of the Church, of 
which God's only Son our Lord is Head. 

But it is asserted that because Christ's 
Headship of the Church is invisible, there- 
fore there can be no necessity for govern- 
mental unity within the Church itself. This 
is as much as to say that because the gen- 
eral-in-chief stands apart, withdrawn from 
the sight of his men, while the battle which 
he has planned and which he really directs 
is waging (like Molkte winning Sadowa at 



RECONCILIATION. 191 

Berlin), therefore there need be in the ranks 
no subordination, no harmony of discipline, no 
one system of control. True, the Head of 
the Church is invisible, but the army of 
which He is the Head is not, and if ever any 
army needed unity, this one does. The en- 
emy against whom we fight, divided upon 
almost every other point, is at one in hostil- 
ity to Christ. Forces that can agree in 
nothing else, agree in hating the religion of 
the Cross ; and whenever the cry goes up for 
an assault on that, they move in unison. 
We have need of the like wisdom in organ- 
izing for the defense. 

The writer must be pardoned for recurring 
so often to this similitude of an army. He 
has done it for two reasons : first, because 
army life and its necessities have of late been 
brought so vividly before the eyes of the peo- 
ple that any illustration drawn from that 
quarter is sure to be appreciated ; and sec- 
ondly, because there is no argument from 
analogy that has been so lamentably per- 
verted in the interests of sectarianism as this 
very one. 

Just as an army, they tell us, is made up 
of companies, and regiments, and brigades, 
and divisions, and corps, and just as these 



192 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

bodies are of differing sizes and variously as- 
sorted as to their uniforms and weapons and 
modes of drill, so the visible Church of 
Christ on earth is composed of an indefinite 
number of sects or denominations, all en- 
gaged in the same warfare, but variously 
equipped, variously armed, and variously ma- 
noeuvred. This is a fair statement of the 
sectarian argument, and as such is familiar to 
every reader. 

But there is another way of putting the 
question, which is, to say the least, quite as 
strong. What army ever won a battle when 
every division and every regiment and every 
company carried on the fight each accord- 
ing to its own discretion ? 

The allied forces at Waterloo were com- 
posed of English, Dutch, Belgians, Brans- 
wickers, and Hanoverians, not to mention 
Blucher and his Prussians. Supposing these 
various contingents, pleading ignorance of 
one another's language and habits, had un- 
dertaken to fight on independent principles, 
after the guerrilla fashion, — would the tide 
of battle have turned as it did ? Moreover, 
the comparison of the various arms of the 
service, such as the infantry, the cavalry, and 
the artillery, to sectarian divisions is specially 



RECONCILIATION. 193 

defective, for the reason that notwithstanding 
the great u diversities of administration " and 
" diversities of operations " that characterize 
these several branches, one general scheme 
of polity covers them all ; they are officered 
upon one and the same principle, and, when 
massed for any definite purpose, they yield 
obedience to the same superiors. Indeed, the 
only difference between an army and a mob 
lies here, that in the one there is discipline 
and subordination and concerted action, while 
in the other Heaven's first law is set at 
naught. 

Advocates of the sectarian principle would 
do well to be shy of this army illustration. 
In their hands the recoil is far more destruc- 
tive than the discharge. A much better 
way for them, if they would preserve con- 
sistency, is to abandon the idea of a visible 
church altogether, and take refuge in such 
consolations as individualism can afford. 

The Church may safely admit an almost in- 
finite variety of ways and methods ; she can 
allow^ and must allow for differences of char- 
acter and temperament and taste ; but she 
insists that this freedom of play is beneficial 
only in so far as it consists with a recognition 
of authority and a faithful obedience to law. 

13 



194 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

Thus far the argument for governmental 
unity has been mainly one of analogy, an ap- 
peal to the mind's native sense of the fitness 
of things. But this is not the only reliance 
of the Anglican principle. History has a 
word to say. 

There exists a form of Church polity which 
can be traced back, century after century, 
until we come to the very confines of the 
Apostolical age. A characteristic feature of 
this polity is headship. The name of it is 
the Episcopate. " After we have passed the 
difficulties of the first century," says Gibbon, 
" we find the Episcopal government univer- 
sally established." 1 What "the difficulties 
of the first century" were, Gibbon fails to 
state, and whether he referred to difficulties 
in the Church or difficulties in his own mind 
does not appear. His testimony to the high 
antiquity of the Episcopate is chiefly valua- 
ble, because he cannot possibly be suspected 
of a bias in favor of the Church. But what- 
ever Gibbon's " difficulties " may have been, 
neither he nor any other historian has ever 
proved that the polity which was universal in 

1 " Nulla Ecclesia sine Episcopo^' he adds, " has been a fact 
as well as a maxim since the time of Tertullian and Ire- 
naeus." — Decline and Fall, vol. i. p. 557, Anier. Ed. 



RECONCILIATION. 195 

the year of grace 100 is another polity than 
that which was established on the day when 
Jesus, going up into a mountain, called 
unto Him whom He would, and " ordained 
twelve." 

The Episcopate, therefore, has a strong 
historical presumption in its favor, — a pre- 
sumption which nine tenths of contemporary 
Christendom respect, and which must be 
wholly overthrown before any other form of 
polity can put forward a reasonable claim to 
general acceptance. At any rate, it is by the 
Episcopate, as one of its four cardinal points, 
that Anglicanism stands or falls. 

The reluctance of the American mind to 
accept the Episcopate as a basis of reconcilia- 
tion may be traced to tw^o sources. In the 
first place, there is an undefined, but very 
real and very general dislike of the phrase 
" Apostolical Succession." For some reason 
or other, the words are associated in people's 
thoughts with narrowness and bigotry. They 
are supposed to be the cloak of some strange 
superstition, bred in the unwholesome air of 
the dark ages. Opponents of the doctrine 
represent the advocates of it as ascribing to a 
Bishop's touch a magical power akin to that 
which was once thought to reside in the hands 



196 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

of royalty. But the writer cannot help think- 
ing that, after all, the prejudice is more 
against the phrase than against the thing for 
which the phrase stands. It is certainly pos- 
sible for a man to be a staunch upholder of 
the doctrine of the Apostolical Succession, 
while at the same time he is without a tinc- 
ture of superstition or intolerance. 1 Indeed, 
if there be no such thing as the Apostolical 
Succession, if the Episcopate have no more 
claim on our regard than any other form of 
ecclesiastical polity, then the sooner Angli- 
cans in America shut their church - doors 
and burn their prayer-books, the better ; for 
they are only adding, upon insufficient 
grounds, one more to the sectarian divisions 
under which the land groans. But if they 
have in the Episcopate that which links them 
by an actual historical connection to the 
Church of the primitive times, then ought they 
to thank God and take courage, and do all 
they can by the removal of misapprehensions 
and disabilities and needless partition walls 

1 In illustration of this, see a profoundly philosophical sermon 
by Prof. Archer Butler on Primitive Church Principles not 
inconsistent with Universal Christian Sympathy. An extract 
will be found in the Appendix, Note-B. Mr. Haddan's recent 
work on Apostolical Succession seems to have been conceived 
in the same spirit. 



I 



RECONCILIATION. 197 

of prejudice, to make their inheritance avail- 
able for the enrichment of the whole scat- 
tered flock of Christ. 1 

The other source of distrust in the Episco- 
pate to which reference was made, is this. 
There is a latent suspicion among Americans 
that this form of ecclesiastical polity is not in 
harmony with " the genius of republican in- 
stitutions." That such a prejudice should 
exist is by no means surprising ; indeed, the 
marvel is that under the circumstances the 
feeling is not stronger. Our grandfathers 
identified Episcopacy with the British mon- 
archy, and for the most part were thoroughly 
persuaded that bishops and kings were in un- 
holy alliance against human liberty. It takes 
a long time for feelings of this sort to die. 
They get into the blood and stay there. 
But as the people of the country become bet- 
ter educated, and learn to extend their view 
of the past beyond the few generations which 
local tradition covers, they will see that the 
Episcopate, so far from being pledged to alli- 
ance with any particular civil polity, possesses 
a wonderful power of adaptation to all forms 
of social organization. Certainly no historical 
scholar will venture to affirm that the Epis- 

1 See Appendix, Note E. 



193 THE CHHRCH-IDEA. 

copate has ever, for any extended period, been 
the willing slave of either imperialism or 
monarchy. 

It is generally agreed that in the first age 
of the Church, bishops were chosen by the 
suffrages of the faithful, and then consecrated 
to their office and given authority to execute 
its duties by other bishops who had in times 
past been similarly empowered. It is thus 
that the American Episcopate is perpetuated 
to-day. Our bishops trace their consecration 
to the Anglican Church, and through the 
Anglican Church to the Church of the Apos- 
tolical age ; but they owe their election to 
the free voice of the people of their respective 
flocks, and exercise their authority in as strict 
conformity to constitutional law as a president 
or a governor. 

It is interesting to observe, as one of the 
healthy fruits of the republican movement in 
America, that the Church of England, in this 
crisis of her destiny, looks across the ocean 
for an instance of a return to primitive meth- 
ods in the selection of men for the Episco- 
pate. 1 There is, indeed, a difference of the- 

1 '• The practice of the Episcopal Church in the United 
States, and now happily introduced in some of our own 
Colonial Dioceses, in respect of the election of Bishops, seems 



RECONCILIATION. 199 

ory between the Republic and the Church 
with regard to the origin of authority, but 
it is not a difference that need provok^ the 
slightest conflict. We must distinguish be- 
tween authority and power. All Christian 
people agree that the Divine Will is the ul- 
timate source of power. " There is no power 
but of God." Authority is delegated power. 
The difference between the Republican and 
the Church theories turns upon the manner 
of delegating the power. In the Republic, 
the authority is conferred by the direct act 
of the people. In the Church, the people 
designate the particular person with whom 
the authority is to be lodged, but the author- 
ity itself is conferred by those who in their 
turn received it by transmission from the 
past. Hence States may be forever spring- 
ing into existence anew ; but a " new Church " 
is an impossibility. Now it is evident that 
these two theories of authority cannot coex- 
ist either in the State alone, or in the Church 
alone. But when Church and State are 
separate, thoughtful friends of their country 
may think it not unbeneficial to the common 

to approach more nearly than that of any other portion of the 
Catholic Church to the primitive model described by Cyprian 
as observed ' fere per universas Provincias.' " — Moberley's 
Bampton Lectures for 1868, p. 333. 



200 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

weal to have the two theories work side by 
side, each in its own sphere. Perhaps, like 
centripetal and centrifugal forces, they may 
serve to keep our social system in true equi- 
poise. 

And now the argument in behalf of the 
four cardinal points of the Anglican position 
is closed. The appeal has been throughout 
rather to first principles than to historical de- 
tails. If full information be desired upon 
such matters as the history of the Primitive 
Church, the Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, 
and Unitarian controversies, the validity of 
Anglican Orders, or the Constitution of the 
American Episcopate, there are books with- 
out number that contain it all. But there 
has seemed to be wanting to the literature 
of this subject a brief and simple exposition 
of what may be called the philosophy of 
Church unity, and more especially Church 
unity in America. This it has been the 
writer's aim to furnish. 

It remains to touch upon a few points that 
have thus far passed unnoticed. 

Some readers have perhaps been surprised 
at not finding uniformity in the mode of con- 
ducting divine service reckoned among the 
essentials of unity. The omission has not been 



RECONCILIATION. 201 

due to any lack of appreciation of the value of 
a liturgy. As a Churchman, the writer need 
scarcely say that in. his own judgment this 
method of divine service is the only one fit- 
ted to insure that combination of solemnity, 
heartiness, devotional richness, and doctrinal 
fidelity which all Christians will agree ought 
to characterize the public worship of Al- 
mighty God. 

Certainly if the Bride of Christ can with- 
out vainglory boast of her adornments, she 
must be pardoned for taking an especial 
pride in that clothing of wrought gold with 
which the devotion of the centuries has robed 
her. The Anglican Church is so closely 
identified in history and in the popular mind 
with a particular liturgy that she has been 
not inaptly called " the Church of the 
Prayer-book." 1 Apart from the usual ar- 

1 The following extract is from a most racy and entertain- 
ing sermon lately preached by a Congregational clergyman 
from the text, " Let another man praise thee, not thine own 
mouth: a stranger, and not thine own lips:^ — "The Episco- 
copal Church offers for our use the most venerable liturgy in 
"the English tongue. The devotional treasures of the Roman 
Catholic Church are embalmed and buried in Latin. But in 
English there are no lessons, gospels, psalms, collects, confes- 
sions, thanksgivings, prayers — in one word, no religious 
form book that can stand a moment in comparison with the 
Prayer-book of the Episcopal Church in the twofold quality 
of richness and age. 



202 THE CHUECH-IDEA. 

guments in behalf of liturgical worship with 
which every one is familiar, — such as these : 
that it gives the people a more generous 
share of the service ; that it insures great 
comprehensiveness of intercession, and a sys- 
tematic reading of the Holy Scriptures ; that 
it protects congregations against crudities of 
thought, mistakes of feeling, and infelicities 
of expression on the part of inexperienced or 
undevout men (arguments all of them which 
must be allowed some weight), — apart from 
these considerations, great significance at- 

" The proper name, because truly descriptive, for this 
Church, would be Church of the Prayer-Book. As is 
the way with all other Churches, so here, the Church cham- 
pions and leaders have many wise things to say about the 
Church and her prerogative. But the pious multitude that 
frequent her courts are drawn thither mostly by love of the 
prayers and praises, the litanies and lessons of the Prayer- 
book. 

" And, brethren of every name, I certify you that you 
rarely hear in any church a prayer spoken in English that is 
not indebted to the Prayer-book for some of its choicest 
periods. 

" And further. I doubt whether life has in store for any of 
you an uplift so high or downfall so deep, but that you can 
find company for your soul and fitting words for your lips 
among the treasures of this Book of Common Prayer." — The 
Rev. T. K. Beecher, On the Episcopal Church. 

One can imagine the Puritanism of Hooker's time rising 
from its grave, and exclaiming in dismay to this most undu- 
tiful of prophets, " I called thee to curse mine enemies, and, 
behold, thou hast altogether blessed them these three times." 



RECONCILIATION. 203 

taches to the simple fact that this method of 
worship was in universal use throughout the 
Christian world for at least fourteen hundred 
years. Extemporaneous public worship is a 
thing of yesterday as compared with these 
venerable usages of divine service, w r hich are 
our inheritance from the earry centuries. 

And yet, strong as is the argument for li- 
turgical worship upon grounds of expediency 
and fitness, there are good reasons for not 
reckoning a strict uniformity in this regard 
among the first principles of Church unity. 
It is true that liturgical worship was univer- 
sal at the earliest date in the history of the 
Christian Society of which w r e have any au- 
thentic post - Scriptural record. But it is 
equally true that the liturgies of that age ex- 
isted in wonderful variety. Upon this point 
all scholars are agreed. Indeed, so numerous 
were the early formularies of worship that 
they can be distributed into groups and fam- 
ilies, genera and species, very much as natu- 
ralists classify animals and plants. Out of 
four, or perhaps five, primitive liturgies, there 
seem to have been developed an almost count- 
less variety of forms, each retaining, it is true, 
a strong family likeness to the parent stock, 
and yet each manifesting some marked pecul- 



204 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

iarities of its own. Hence among the infant 
sciences " comparative liturgies " claims a 
place by the side of comparative philology, 
and the proper grouping of liturgies is dis- 
cussed, like the proper grouping of languages, 
with much ability and earnestness. 1 

But the Anglican system, in requiring con- 
formity to one, and one only liturgy, is mani- 
festly at variance with the Anglican prin- 
ciple ^ which appeals to primitive and catholic 
usage for terms of unity ; and since the pres- 
ent writer is engaged in the advocacy of the 
Anglican principle alone, it is right that he 
.should confine himself to the demands of 
that. 

In the Church of the Ee conciliation " the 
Prayer-book as it is " would doubtless hold 
its place ; and if that formulary be indeed all i 
that we who love it claim, there would soon 
be no competitor in the field. But, mean- 
while, why might there not be congregations I 
pledged to the four cardinal points which 
have been seen to belong to the essence of 
unity, while yet they worshipped, some of 
them with a liturgy modified from the pre- 

1 See Freeman's Principles of Divine Service, vol. ii. I 
part ii. p. 381; also Dr. Xeale's curious Genealogical Tree of\ 
Liturgies. 



RECONCILIATION. 205 

vailing type, and some of them with no lit- 
urgy at all, provided there were in this latter 
case a guarantee that in the administration 
of the two Sacraments the words of Christ 
Himself should be invariably used ? 

In such an event we certainly should not 
be further removed from our fellow-Chris- 
tians of other names than we now are ; on the 
contrary, we should be much nearer to them. 
At any rate, the suggestion ought not to be 
condemned without a hearing. The specta- 
cle of congregations worshipping in different 
ways while within the pale of the same 
church would unquestionably be a novelty; 
but would it be any more discordant in the 
eyes of the God and Father of us all, or any 
more scandalous to the mind of an unbeliev- 
ing world, than the spectacle which may be 
seen now of congregations worshipping in 
different ways, but not within the pale of the 
same church? Would not the differences 
of opinion about the way in • which u men 
ought to worship," that have been troubling 
Christians for the last three hundred years, 
be more likely to disappear if we were to 
draw the line of our charity around the dis- 
sentients, than they are if we draw that line 
between these neighbors and ourselves, and 



206 THE CHUECH-IDEA. 

then attempt to convert them to our view by 
talking across the intervening barrier? 

The Church of England, no doubt, aimed 
to remedy a real evil when at the Reforma- 
tion she declared, in the Preface to her Com- 
mon Prayer, that " whereas heretofore there 
hath been great diversity in saying and. sing- 
ing in churches within this realm : some fol- 
lowing Salisbury Use. some Hereford Use, and 
some the Use of Bangor, some of York^ and 
some of Lincoln ; now from henceforth all 
the whole realm shall have but one Use." 
But the Acts of Uniformity have not been, 
in the lono; run, a distinguished success : and 
it is just possible that by a more permissive 
line of legislation we in America can sooner 
secure the desired result, — harmony of wor- 
ship. 1 

1 It is pleasant to be able to cite in this connection that 
cla.rum et venerabile nomen, the late Bishop of Maine. He 
says: " The prayers of the Church maintain, in the judgment 
of mankind, an almost undisputed supremacy, not only for 
their venerable antiquity in general, but also as models of 
doctrinal simplicity, majesty, and fervor. There is in them, 
confessedly, but the very smallest portion of matter which 
any believer could hesitate to adopt; and the objections of 
the Puritan writers amaze the present generation. But these 
forms of worship are by no means essentia! to the existence of 
that unity which the Episcopate perpetuates. It is perfectly 
conceivable that the usages of different communions, their 
extemporaneous devotions, prayer-meetings, classes, and 



RECONCILIATION. 207 

Readers of these papers who have no par- 
ticular sympathy with Anglican ideas and 
traditions will wonder, perhaps, at the confi- 
dence with which certain points have been 

whatever might have been held conducive to edification, 
should all be found in churches administered under one epis- 
copal system."— Bishop Burgess, in the Bibliotheca Sacra 
for October, 1863. 

A witness summoned from a very opposite school of thought 
and practice is the Rev. A. H. Mackonochie, the representa- 
tive man among the English Ritualists. At the late Liverpool 
Church Congress he " contended for perfect liberty, especially 
in the framing of short services. In particular, he instanced 
the case of working men, who were too tired, after their day's 
work, for regular Even-song : — 

" At such a time a few solemn readings of Holy Scripture 
— merely a few verses, which they could remember and take 
away with them, of encouragement, admonition, or warning, 
as the priest or clergyman might see fit — with perhaps one 
or two hymns, would be of immense value to them. And he 
did not see why, if souls could be saved by extempore prayer, 
they should not have extempore prayer. The question was 
not satisfying this person or that person ; it was not the carry- 
ing out of a rigid system, but it was the laying hold of souls 
for their blessed Lord's sake. If one section of the Church — 
those who agreed mostly with him — thought that by such 
occasional services they could best fulfill their duty, let them 
have them. And if there were others who thought that by 
extempore prayer, in one form or other, they could best lay 
hold of their own people, he for one also said, why should 
they not have them? (Cheers.) 

" Mr. Mackonochie stated that while in Scotland last summer 
he had been invited to conduct a service in a fisherman's hut 
on the Presbyterian model. He complied, and so far as he 
could tell, the poor people entered heartily into the service; 
it did them good, as it certainly did him. (Loud applause.) " 



208 THE CHUECH-1DEA. 

urged as absolutely prerequisite to any genu- 
ine unity. Churchmen, on the other hand, 
will many of them wonder far more at the 
magnitude of the concessions which have 
been treated as possible. 

To the first class of dissentients the whole 
argument has been addressed, and there is 
nothing more to urge. To his brother 
Churchmen the writer would simply sav, 
Consider carefully whether any point has 
been yielded that is really essential to the 
Anglican position. This is not a question of 
preferences, but of principles. Unless we are 
all of us prepared to accommodate ourselves 
to what are only the preferences of others, at 
the same time that we ask them to respect our 
own. the Church of the Reconciliation may 
as well be given over at once as a lost cause. 

One thing, however, the writer owes it to 
himself to say. The advocacy or defense of 
lawlessness has been no part of the purpose 
of this book. The spirit of insubordination 
and self-will may raise a storm ; it cannot lull 
one, — and it must be remembered that we 
are now in the storm. The love of law is 
twin-sister to the law of love. " Every 
fringe," says Mgr. Manning, in his stinging 
rebuke of English Ritualism, — " every fringe 



RECONCILIATION. 209 

in an elaborate cope worn without authority 
is only a distinct and separate act of private 
judgment ; the more elaborate, the less Cath- 
olic ; the nearer the imitation, the further 
from the submission of faith." 1 The remark 
applies in all directions ; to those to whom 
copes are an abomination, and to those who 
covet copes. The true way to make our 
Fold catholic is through a generous opening 
of the gates by the hand of law, not by a 
promiscuous leaping over the wall at the dic- 
tate of individual caprice. 

And yet it is perfectly possible for this 
reverence for law to consist with a passionate 
longing after a larger measure of practical 
comprehensiveness than we now see in the 
Church. The higher a man's Churchman- 
ship, in the best sense, that is to say, the 
more exalted the estimate he holds of the dig- 
nity and value of the Church as the Body of 
Christ, the Pillar and Ground of the Truth, 
the earthly City of God, all the more eager 
ought he to be to see the ecclesiastical polity 
made as elastic and as inclusive as the re- 
quirements of holiness and truth will permit. 
Vastly more than the two adjectives of po- 
sition, " high " and " low," have we need to 
dread the two adjectives of quality, " bitter " 

1 England and Christendom, Introduction, p. lxxxiii. 



210 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

and "selfish." By the phrase "a good 
Churchman," ought to be intended a Church- 
man who is good ; and a Churchman who 
is good will love to acknowledge goodness 
wherever he sees it, and will even go out 
of his way to find it ; for there is no danger 
of our compromising our Churchmanship by 
taking large-hearted, as well as large-minded 
views upon the great social and religious 
questions of the day. 

If our whole ambition as Anglicans in 
America be to continue a small, but emi- 
nently respectable body of Christians, and to 
offer a refuge to people of refinement and sen- 
sibility, who are shocked by the irreverences 
they are apt to encounter elsewhere ; in a 
word, if we care to be only a countercheck 
and not a force in society ; then let us say as 
much in plain terms, and frankly renounce- 
any and all claim to Catholicity. We have 
only, in such a case, to wrap the robe of our 
dignity about us, and walk quietly along in 
a seclusion no one will take much trouble to 
disturb. Thus may we be a Church in name, 
and a sect in deed. 

But if we aim at something nobler than 
this, if we would have our Communion be- 
come national in very truth, — in other words, 



RECONCILIATION. 211 

if we would bring the Church of Christ into 
the closest possible sympathy with the throb- 
bing, sorrowing, sinning, repenting, aspiring 
heart of this great people, — then let us press 
our reasonable claims to be the reconciler of a 
divided household, not in a spirit of arrogance 
(which ill befits those whose best possessions 
have come to them by inheritance), but with 
affectionate earnestness and an intelligent 
zeal. We have not, as a Communion, such a 
monopoly of either piety or learning in this 
land that we can afford to be contemptuous, 
even if that temper were ever permissible in 
a Christian Church. But we have, through 
the blessing of God, the title-deeds of the 
old homestead in our hands ; we sit by the 
hearth-stone of the English-speaking race ; 
and ought -we to be blamed for thinking that 
if the family can be gathered anywhere in 
peace, it must be here ? Nay, when our 
fellow-Christians tell us that this or that feat- 
ure of our system is a bar to unity, may we 
not ask them charitably to consider whether, 
along with our disadvantages, there be not 
some advantages not to be found elsewhere, 
and whether, when the right time comes, it 
be not just possible that we may have some- 
thing to contribute towards, as well as some- 



212 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

thing to sacrifice for, the Church of the Rec- 
onciliation ? 

For these reasons it is of the utmost im- 
portance to have it known that our real dis- 
tinction as a Church does not lie, as so many 
seem to suppose it does, in our preference for 
pointed architecture, and stained glass, and 
chanted music, and ministerial vestments, 
but in our faithful — some will have it obsti- 
nate — adherence to the primitive and Cath- 
olic standards of unity. 

Moreover, let us give the people to under- 
stand that we are interested in what interests 
them. Let ns cultivate the power of adapta- 
tion to the needs of " all sorts and conditions 
of men." Let us train our preachers to han- 
dle living topics, to throw down the gage to 
contemporary forms of unbelief, rather than 
busy themselves with cutting off the heads of 
deceased giants originally slain by men who 
had the wit to forge their weapons for them- 
selves. Let us encourage our men of action 
to head popular movements and direct them, 
instead of standing daintily aloof, — 

u In impotence of fancied power." 

A rigid, unsympathetic temper on our part 
will never win America to the Church. We 
must cause it to be clearlv understood that 



RECONCILIATION. 213 

God's Household is large enough and roomy 
enough for all forms of activity that make 
for good. The blunders that are conspicu- 
ous in the popular crusades of our time and 
country are largely traceable to the want 
of that wise guidance which the Church 
might give, if only she had the confidence 
and love of the nation. We charge much of 
the current philanthropy of the day with 
godlessness. But whose fault is it that this 
philanthropy is godless ? Why, when soci- 
ety feels with unusual pain the pressure of 
some especial curse or want, does society look 
in almost any direction rather than to the 
Church for help? Some will answer that it 
is because of a certain perverseness in society 
itself. This is partly true, but it is not all 
the truth. We cannot forget that there was 
once a time when the Church was the recog- 
nized Mother of beneficence, the almoner of 
all tender and gentle charity, the hospital 
and asylum and reformatory of the world, as 
well as the world's House of Prayer. 

Take the temperance movement for ex- 
ample. The failure of the movement, in 
so far as it has failed to rid the community 
of a frightful curse, has been due to misdirec- 
tion. A mistake was committed by the friends 



214 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

of ** the cause " in supposing that banners and 
processions and " regalia,'' and all the accesso- 
ries of secret societies, could accomplish what 

the sacred society founded so long ago in 

j © © 

Palestine could not. 

And now, after some forty years of assidu- 
ous effort, and after much making and un- 

* © 

making of statute law, men are coming around 

© ' © 

to the persuasion that in the old-fashioned 
principles of mutual help under temptation, 
and self-denial for a brother's sake, in short, 
by putting into practice, each as he has op- 
portunity, the full Christian law of charity, 
lies the best hope of the temperance cause. 
Yet much failure and disappointment might 
have been saved, had the Church been alive 
to the popular need, and made herself a faith- 
ful apostle of the true temperance at the start. 
Or take another movement which has only 
just begun, namely, that in behalf of a larger 
field of activity for women. There is in it 
much food for easy ridicule. In some of its 
aspects it is, in truth, what it has been se- 
verely called, u a revolt against nature." 
And yet the movement, with all its crudities 
and immodesties and extravagances, has a 

significance which the Church ought not to 
© © 

neglect. These restless souls are not restless 



RECONCILIATION. 2 15 

wholly without cause ; were it so, they would 
not win a following. The Church has al- 
ways been woman's best friend in the past ; 
it remains to be seen whether the Church 
cannot help woman now, not only by culti- 
vating reverence for those forms of suffering 
and service which are her appointed lot, but 
also by opening to her avenues of usefulness, 
which, if less conspicuous than the Platform 
and the Bar, are not less sure than they of 
leading to that honor which is the invariable 
reward to true desert. 

These are but illustrations of the kind of 
questions which perplex the mind of society. 
Why is it that the Church of Christ does not 
grapple with them, and insist on finding an 
answer ? We come back to the old trouble, 
Disunion. The Church fails, because the 
Church is broken. 

But the horizon is not all overcast. There 
are many tokens of a golden morning near at 
hand. People's minds are gradually becoming 
thoroughly awake to the importance of the 
subject, and this in itself is a great gain. 1 The 

1 Even while these last pages are passing through the press, 
the writer's attention has been called to a new treatise on this 
subject from the pen of the Rev. Dorus Clark, D. D., a Con- 
gregational clerg} 7 man. Dr. Clark writes upon The Oneness 
of the Christian Chiwch, and nothing could be more pro- 



216 THE CHURCH-IDEA. 

first step toward finding a remedy for our 
ailments is to acknowledge that we are sick. 
Christendom, with a very querulous voice, is 
beginning to do just this. Then there is still 
further encouragement in the fact that all 
over the world religious thought is concen- 



nounced or vigorous than his exposure of the fallacies of sec- 
tarianism. Christ intended, he insists, not merely a spiritual 
fellowship among His followers, but an actual and visible one- 
ness; a Church unity over and above a Christian unity. 

But from this height of premise Dr. Clark presently falls to 
what the writer, with the convictions he has already expressed 
as to the necessity of an historical basis of unity, cannot but 
regard as a most unsatisfactory conclusion. Dr. Clark sees 
no hope of Church unity save as it may emerge out of a bet- 
ter understanding than has ever yet existed among theolo- 
gians with regard to the right interpretation of the Scriptures. 
The recent advances in Biblical science warrant, he thinks, 
the expectation that such a consensus may yet be attained, 
But it is difficult to see how this conclusion consists with 
what is said in the earlier part of the same treatise about the 
folly of expecting Church unity to be brought about by a 
convention of denominations. How otherwise could it be 
brought about, when the need of historical continuity has 
been once repudiated *? Why not rather take the primitive 
Creeds as the only Biblical consensus necessary, and then make 
unity actual, as well as ideal, through the Sacraments and 
the Episcopate ? But while thus dissenting from what seems 
to him the inconsequence of Dr. Clark's argument, the writer 
may be permitted to express his warm admiration of The 
Oneness of the Christian Church, as a bold protest against 
what has been the too common line of teaching with writers 
upon American ecclesiastical polity. Among " the signs of 
the times" in New England, the book claims a conspicuous 
place. 



RECONCILIATION. 217 

trating itself more and more every day upon 
the Person of our blessed Lord. Believers 
and unbelievers are alike agitated with the 
question, What think ye of Christ ? This 
is a sure precursor of renewed efforts after 
unity. The more clearly our holy religion is 
seen to have its centre in Him whose name 
it bears, the more will those who love Him 
in sincerity feel that the Church must be 
one. 

At any rate let us who believe in unity hold 
fast our faith without wavering, well content 
to rank as fools and mad so long as we are 
certain that we have the word of Christ and 
the example of His first missionaries on our 
side. For be the waves never so angry, the 
sky never so dark, the forebodings of disaf- 
fected friends never so gloomy, if we are con- 
fident that the ship's head is right, our only 
duty is to 

" Still bear up, and steer 
Right onward." 



APPENDIX. 



NOTE A, p. 93.— A FOREIGNER'S VIEW OF RELIG- 
ION IN AMERICA. 

The following extract from an article on the state of 
religion in this country is as suggestive as it is amusing. 
The writer is the Rev. Harry Jones, an English clergyman 
who has lately been passing a vacation here. Mr. Jones 
is an acute observer, as well as a genial critic, and his 
" American Notes " are vastly more accurate than certain 
papers which, under the same title, irritated the national 
nerves some thirty years ago : — 

" There is no body corresponding to a national Church 
which admits Catholicity of views among its members. 
Churches and parties are sharply defined, though, as I 
have said, among the chief Protestant communities there 
is some interchange of membership, and ministers fre- 
quently unite in the prosecution of some common object. 
But the views of the majority prevail in each church. A 
congregation of Episcopalians is, I think, throughout the 
country, more distinctly high or low than with us. In- 
deed, the word ' parish/ as understood in England, has no 
meaning in America. It is constantly used, but in a con- 
gregational, not territorial sense. And there seems to be 
no real representation of the minority in the government 
of any Church. The minority must conform or depart. 
There is practically no historical code or supreme court to 
which appeal may be made by such as cannot trim their 



APPENDIX. 219 

sentiments to any which may possess the current or pre- 
vailing majority. A margin of a few High or Low Church- 
men among the Episcopalians can by their votes color the 
whole government of the Church, and procure the promo- 
tion of the adherents of their own party alone. One effect, 
however, of the American system is to promote schism. 
A party gets preeminence, and keeps the other out of place. 
And this is a process which accumulates in intensity till 
the baffled minority breaks off and forms a new community 
for itself. When that is done, there may be an interchange 
of some offices between the two bodies, but till then the 
member of a church who cannot always think according 
to order is in a somewhat depressed and irritating position. 
I have been struck with the paucity, if not absence, of * 
those whom we call ' Broad ; in the American Episcopal 
Church. I was almost going to say that they were ' no- 
where ' in that body. And from what I could make out, 
this apj)lies in some measure to all American religious 
communities. A man belongs to some party, and that 
party has a representative ' church,' which holds some 
friendly relations with others, but expects its own members 
to think in unison far more than the members of the 
Church of England do. There is more choice of opinions 
than individual liberty of judgment. 

" The result of this is a conglomeration of sects which 
forms the nearest approach to a national Church. Among 
these there is in the main some informal good understand- 
ing, but no one would care to claim or allow anything like 
authoritative preeminence, except of course the Romish 
Church, which recognizes nothing but itself. Each gov- 
erns itself; there is no fixed common representative ac- 
credited body. Some may unite for a passing purpose, 
but such union is only temporary. The American Church 
in the largest sense is a congeries of religious republics 
which have no permanent federation." 



220 APPENDIX. 

The following paragraphs, although scarcely relevant to 
the subject in hand, may do some good : — 

" I confess that I did not like divers of the services in 
the Episcopal Church which I attended. Any of our 
brethren in America who may read this must forgive me 
when I say that I was sometimes struck to the backbone 
by their coldness. Eespectability seemed to reign supreme. 
That is, however, an essential feature in American re- 
ligious gatherings. In church there was frequently but 
little responding. The choir, consisting generally of la- 
dies and gentlemen in a gallery, as a rule, sings to the 
congregation, which listens. Some of the clergy feel this 
painfully 

" One thing which struck me in almost all the congrega- 
tions I saw was the large, in some instances very large, 
proportion of men present. The defect in responding does 
not, I believe, arise from indifference to the service, but 
rather from the silence which is a striking feature of 
American gatherings. Eeligion there is an eminently 
pressing, nay, sometimes importunate matter of general 
public concern ; and men do not leave its observances 
to be attended by what have been called ' bonnets and 
babies/ The man element is very conspicuous 

" As far as I could understand it, however, generally 
the style of service in the Episcopal Church was what is 
sometimes called i high and dry ' with us. Again I re- 
mark that the coldness I noticed must be attributed more 
to what appeared to me a national spirit of silence, if not 
sadness, than to indifference. Ajnericans struck me as 
naturally preoccupied and reserved ; and their reserve 
shows itself when they are particularly serious/' 1 

1 From The Guardian of December 22, 1869. 



APPENDIX. 221 



NOTE B, p. 196. — " PRIMITIVE CHURCH PRINCI- 
PLES NOT INCONSISTENT WITH UNIVERSAL 
CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY." 

" Situated as we are in the midst of large bodies of ex- 
cellent and able men, who reject indeed our ministrations, 
yet whom we are bound to conciliate to the very last de- 
gree that involves no surrender of principle ; the public 
mind around us agitated by unwarrantable representations 
of the Church's belief as to her ministry ; and those whom 
we have undertaken to guide anxiously inquiring of us 
our real claims ; Romanists with some, if we do not 
rank everything else above our office ; Puritans with oth- 
ers, if we do not rank our office above everything else, — 
it is surely fitting that we should furnish ourselves with 
some definite principles on the question, capable of direct 

and practical application By one party it is 

openly professed that the polity of the Church and minis- 
try of Christ is entirely a matter of temporary, occasional, 
variable expediency; that all bodies and all individuals who 
believe in the name of Jesus are equally contemplated in 
His original charter, and equally realize His original de- 
sign. By the other it is usually maintained, with as res- 
olute a conviction, that the one constitution of the Church 
and her ministry, being in every element essentially divine, 
forms the sole exclusive machinery of human salvation ; 
that to it alone the sanctifying graces of the Gospel are 
promised; and that there exists no ground in the New 
Testarnent for anticipating that they can ever travel out 
of the channel it affords for their transmission. 

" The eager advocates of each of these views are so pos- 
sessed with the absolute truth of the main principle for 
which they struggle, as to overlook the enormous difficul- 
ties that challenge them when they descend to the simple 
facts of the case ; when the bold theory of the latitudina- 



222 APPENDIX. 

rian is met not only by the internal improbability of his 
supposition, bat by the clear evidence of Scripture and 
Apostolic antiquity : when the rigorous scheme of his op- 
ponent is encountered by the overwhelming evidence of 
daily experience, establishing by the most decisive attesta- 
tions, by proofs which, if we reject, we must reject all hu- 
man reasoning on religion, that the purifying and saving 
graces of the Gospel are not limited, as he would affirm, 
but extend through almost every community in which the 
leading doctrines of the faith of Christ are preached. 

" When views thus contradictory and thus extreme are 
put forth ; when it is certain they cannot both be strictly 
true ; when both may be made in their degree plausible, 
and yet facts exist that seem inconsistent with either, — 
the most valuable service that can be rendered to the pub- 
lic mind is the work of limitation : the attempt to show 
under what qualifications principles true in themselves 
ought to be accepted, so as to make them consistent with 
others of equal certainty. This is an humble task appar- 
ently ; but the whole history of human knowledge has 
shown that it is far from being an easy one in reality. 
The most important steps in every part of moral science 
have consisted in this very adjustment of rival troths ; it 
is much less difficult to see the force of a great principle 
than to see its limits.''' * 

The above extract has been reprinted chiefly in the hope 
of attracting the reader to the sermon itself, which will 
well repay careful study. An American edition of Pro- 
fessor Butler's Sermons is accessible. 

1 Sermons Doctrinal and Practical. By the Rev. William 
Archer Butler. M. A. First Series, Serm. XXIV. 



APPENDIX. 223 



NOTE C, p. 173. — THE DOCTRINAL COMPREHEN- 
SIVENESS OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 

Upon this point the new Bishop of Carlisle, Dr. Har- 
vey Goodwin, has expressed himself in the following 
hearty and straightforward way : — 

" I acknowledge therefore freely that it is impossible 
for men, if they think at all, to think exactly in the same 
way. But then there is such a thing as minimizing dif- 
ferences, and seeking for points of contact, and sinking 
smaller distinctions in the united acknowledgment of 
great foundation truths: and on the other hand, it is pos- 
sible to stereotype differences which might have been 
transient, to deepen lines of separation, to exaggerate 
the importance of controversial distinctions. Let us no- 
tice what has taken place with regard to those three party 
names which I have already cited. They were, I believe, 
made permanent and emphatic in the Church of England, 
at all events unwonted attention was called to them, by 
an ingenious article published some years ago in the 
' Edinburgh Review/ The writer of that article assumed 
that the whole of the clergy could be ranged in three 
classes : he subdivided these classes, so as still further to 
distinguish the schools of clerical opinion, and then, with 
an unfortunate ingenuity, he concluded by assorting the 
whole body of the clergy into his classes and subdivisions. 
This he contrived to do by first ticketing all those whom 
he knew personally, and of whose opinions therefore he 
felt competent to form a judgment; and then, assuming 
that his own friends were a fair sample of the clergy in 
general, he had manifestly sufficient data for determining 
the magnitude of each of the parties into which he was 
pleased to divide the ministers of the Church. It is obvi- 
ous that the* process was uncertain and likely to be fal- 
lacious, but with this I am not now concerned : what I 



224 APPENDIX. 

object to is the attempt to perform such a process ; I ob- 
ject to anv pretense that it is right or possible to divide 
the ministers of the Church into classes having sharply 
defined differences ; I object to be so classified myself, and 
I do not wish that that should be done to others which 
I regard as an insult and a wrong when done to me. 
"Why cannot I be a Churchman without any adjective at 
all, — high as the Church is high, low as the Church is low, 
broad as the Church is broad ? 

" Moreover, there is this evil arising from the neat tripar- 
tite classification against which I am making my pro- 
test, — namely, that people are tempted to assume, and 
often do assume, that the division is so complete and ex- 
haustive that if a man does not belong to the first party 
nor to the second, then he must by logical and inevitable 
necessity belong to the third. Are you a High Church- 
man ? No. Are you a Low Churchman ? So. Ada? ! 
then Broad you must be : and probably he who asks the 
question finds something unspeakably awful in this alter- 
native. 

" In truth, the terms High and Low and Broad, when 
applied to Church principles and opinions, must in the 
nature of things be metaphorical ; and their meaning is 
that which the persons who use them choose to assign to 
them. Their meaning may be good ; it may be much the 
contrary. For example, I apprehend that frequently the 
names are taken somewhat in the following manner. It 
is tacitly assumed that Romanism and Protestant dissent 
are the opposite poles of a certain line of thought : that 
High Churchmen tend to the first. Low Churchmen to 
the second ; so that by* logical necessity a High Church- 
man, if he be only high enough, will become a Bomanist, 
and a Low Churchman, if he be only low enough, will 
sink into some form of Protestant dissent: and if a man's 
stand-point cannot be found in this line, then it is con- 
cluded that it must be somewhere upon an infinite plane 



APPENDIX. 225 

which crosses it, and in which he may easily be lost alto- 
gether. Now if this be the way in which the terms of 
which I am speaking are regarded, — and popularly I be- 
lieve they frequently are so regarded, — then the result is 
most mischievous ; each term becomes a term of reproach, 
and there is only a choice of evils ; for it would seem as 
if no English Churchman could venture to follow out 
his principles to their legitimate consequences : a High 
Churchman is on the way to Rome ; a Low Churchman 
is on the way to dissent ; and a Broad Churchman is a 
hopeless wanderer — on the way — I hardly know whither. 
" This would indeed be a terrible condition of things, but 
I venture to assert that it is an imaginary one. I assert 
that it is possible for an English Churchman to be unat- 
tached to any party, and to be committed to no principle 
which he may not loyally carry out to its legitimate con- 
sequences; nay, further, I believe that if the terms be 
rightly interpreted, every Churchman may be and ought 
to be at once High and Low and Broad. For a man may 
hold strong views with regard to that clause in the Creed 
which speaks of " one Catholic and Apostolic Church ; " 
he may have been led to form a high estimate of the 
Church's powers and functions, of her duty in dispensing 
the Sacraments, of her dignity as the living body of 
Christ ; and, regarding the Church of England as a mem- 
ber of this Church Catholic, a man who holds these views 
may rightly be called a High Churchman, and he will be 
called so in company with such men as Hooker, and 
Jeremy Taylor, and George Herbert, and Bull, and 
Blunt, and Mill. But then a High Churchman of this 
stamp is by no means pledged to put the Church in a 
false position by forgetting the Lord who redeemed her, 
and the Holy Spirit who sanctifies her. True, there was a 
phase of Churchmanship which seemed to do this ; the 
dreary Churchmanship of the last century, which identi- 
fied the Church with the Establishment, and her prosper- 
15 



226 APPENDIX. 

ity with the safety of her tithes, and which reduced her 
orthodoxy to a feeble and ineffectual morality, — this 
kind of Churchmanship did seem to belong to a church 
without a Christ, and to men who had not so much as 
heard whether there be any Holy Ghost ; and when those 
doctrines of grace, which were identified with the names 
of such men as Wesley, and Venn, and Scott, and New- 
ton, and Simeon, were once more preached, no wonder 
that they seemed incompatible with High Churchman- 
ship, and that Low Churchman and Evangelical came to 
mean the same thing. But I want to know what real an- 
tagonism there is between the two views ? If it be the 
creed of the Low Churchman that Jesus Christ must be 
all in all, that nothing must stand between the sinner and 
his Saviour, that the influence of the Holy Ghost is 
needed to sanctify each human soul, and that Christ 
Himself is greater than His Church, greater than Church 
ordinances, greater than Church ministers, and that the 
Church must not be so magnified as to eclipse her Lord, 
then what is there in this creed which a High Church- 
man is not bound and willing to hold ? And once more : 
may not a man hold views which would justify his posi- 
tion amongst High Churchmen and his position amongst 
Low Churchmen, and yet not prevent him from sympa- 
thizing with what may fairly be called Broad Church 
views ? Of course there is an offensive sense which iden- 
tifies such views with mere indifference to dogmatic truth, 
and with these no earnest Churchman can have any sym- 
pathy ; but surely in a pure and legitimate sense the 
Church of England is herself broad; she has shrunk from 
needless definitions; retaining essentials, she has given 
wide liberty in details ; the very fault that some find with 
her is this, that she is too broad, too comprehensive, too 
tolerant, too capable of being made a common house and 
resting-place for a motley multitude of weary, heavy-laden 
souls. Yet if it be a fault, one may well believe that it 



APPENDIX. 227 

will be gently regarded by Him who said, ' Come unto 
Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give 
you rest ; ' and whether fault or not, a man may surely be 
broad as the Church of England is broad, and be a good 
Churchman still. 

" Hence I would venture to express a hope that the divis- 
ions in the Church of England, bad as they are, are not 
so wide or so deep as they are sometimes supposed to be. 
Party men no doubt there are amongst us, but there is a 
large mass of men who own no party leader but Christ, 
and no party name but His ; I would that any words of 
mine could increase their number. That men, if they 
think at all, must upon many subjects think differently, I 
have already allowed, and I am aware also that at the 
present time there are causes at work which tend to 
throw into more than usual prominence the differences 
between one Christian and another ; but that is all the 
more reason why we should try to bring together those 
who can be brought together, why we should shrink from 
exaggerating points of difference, why we should search 
for broad grounds of agreement, and endeavor as much 
as possible to illustrate the grace of charity. 

" Eor while Christians are contending with each other, 
and the Church is divided, and questions are being keenly 
discussed, from the color and shape of a vestment up to 
the highest mysteries of the faith, Satan pursues his work 
with a terrible unity of purpose, and with all the advan- 
tages of an undivided command. What might not the 
Church of England do, if this same unity of practical pur- 
pose were hers ? What might she not do, what victories 
might she not gain, if all her children, forgetting their 
differences, would make a cool, lasting, well-supported at- 
tack upon the powers of evil under Christ their common 
Lord ? And if, being of one mind, and knit together in 
charity, we set ourselves to work to correct what is amiss, 
to strengthen what is weak, and to reform whatever needs 



228 APPENDIX. 

reform in our own government and practice and disci- 
pline, what might we not hope with regard to the attrac- 
tive power of the Church upon the various Christian 
communities round about her ! 

" Is all this chimerical ? Am I as one who beats the 
air, when I speak of the possibility of healing the divis- 
ions by which our Church is rent ? It may be so ; but 
at least I must declare my solemn conviction that the 
best hopes of Christendom are bound up with the Church 
of England, and that the best hopes of the Church of Eng- 
land are to be found in unity. And therefore I would 
say to you, Christian brethren, who in the course of a few 
years will have so much influence upon the current of 
English thought and feeling, and the sight of whom 
brings back to my mind the remembrance of my own 
happiest days, — I would say, strive to strengthen and 
increase this unity ; eschew the spirit of party ; be toler- 
ant of difference of opinion ; and endeavor to stand upon 
the broad common ground of allegiance and love to the 
same Redeemer and membership in the same Church! 
And so may God be with you ! Amen." 1 



NOTE D, p. 176. — " THE XXXIX ARTICLES " IN THE 
EAST. 

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All Eng- 
land, not long since sent to the Greek Patriarch of Con- 
stantinople a fraternal letter, and together with it a copy 
of the Book of Common Prayer for his examination. In 
the Patriarch's reply occurs this remarkable passage : — 

" Having very gratefully received the Sacred Prayer- 
book of your Anglican Confession, presented to us by 

i From Four Sermons preached before the University of 
Cambridge, February, 1869. By Harvey Goodwin, D. D., 
then Dean of Ely. 



APPENDIX. 229 

you, we have deferred an answer chiefly on this account, 
that having more leisurely perused this Ecclesiastical 
book, we might more accurately ascertain how far it in- 
clines to or diverges from genuine Evangelical and Catho- 
lic teaching, and how far it confirms that statement of the 
Preface (p. 7), that ( it contains nothing contrary to the 
Word of God and to sound doctrine.' 

" In the mean time, having gladly received the Encyc- 
lical Epistle published by the Anglican Bishops assembled 
two years since in England, to which is prefixed the com- 
mendatory letter of your ever-to-be-remembered Eminence, 
and perceiving from it that they distinctly confess and 
affirm, simply and in general, that they hold firmly and 
immovably the Holy Scriptures as the Word of God, and 
that they maintain the Creeds of one Holy and Apostolic 
Church, and keep pure and undefiled its ancient order and 
worship, .... and reject all novelty, and are en- 
deavoring to publish abroad in all the earth the saving 
preaching of the Gospel, — perceiving, we say, all this so 
distinctly and generally affirmed in words, we rejoiced 
greatly in our soul, suspecting the approach and dawn of 
the gathering together in one and the same fold of the 
Lord, and the union of all the spiritual sheep everywhere. 

" But on descending to the particulars of the contents 
of the Prayer-book, and of the distinguished Confession 
of the Thirty-nine Articles, contained in it, — since in the 
perusal of them, both the statements concerning the eter- 
nal existence of the Holy Spirit and those concerning the 
Divine Eucharist, and, further, those concerning the num- 
ber of the Sacraments, concerning Apostolic and Ecclesi- 
astical Tradition, the authority of the truly genuine Oecu- 
menical Councils, the position and mutual relations of the 
Church on earth and that in heaven ; and, moreover, the 
honor and reverence due from us to those who are, in the- 
ory and practice, the heroes of the faith, — the adamantine 
martyrs and athletes, — since, we say, these statements 



230 APPENDIX. 

appeared to us to savor too much of novelty ; and that 
which is said (p. 592, Art. xix.), ' As the Churches of 
Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch have erred, so also the 
Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and 
manner of ceremonies, but also in matters of faith/ de- 
prives the Eastern Churches of the orthodoxy and perfec- 
tion of the faith — (let us be permitted to say that accusa- 
tions of our neighbor are out of place in a distinguished 
Confession of Faith) — these statements throw us into sus- 
pense, so that we doubt what we are to judge of the rule 
of Anglican Orthodoxy. We would therefore pray with 
our whole soul to the Author and Finisher of our salva- 
tion, to enlighten the understanding of all with the light 
of His knowledge, and to make of all nations one speech of 
the one faith, and of the one love, and of the one hope of 
the Gospel : that with one mouth and one heart, as merci- 
ful children of one and the same mother, the Church — the 
Catholic Church of the first-begotten — we may glorify 
the Triune God." 1 

"From which it appears," remarks the journalist in 
whose columns the letter was given to the public, " that the 
XXXIX Articles are as much a stumbling-block to East- 
ern Christians as to many Anglicans at home." 

Christian unity among our fellow-countrymen here in 
America cannot but be a matter of vastly greater moment 
to us than the revival of fraternal intercourse with foreign 
Churches. 

Still, it is interesting to catch this voice from the far 
East, and to gather from it that the same return to first 
principles which is needed here, would help us there. 

1 Printed in The Guardian of November 10, 1869. The 
original Greek was given in the following number of the same 
journal. 



APPENDIX. 231 

NOTE E. p. 197. — THE HISTORIC CLAIMS OF THE 
EPISCOPATES 

"History shows, in the actual working of the Epis- 
copate, two obvious things. In the first place, the Episco- 
pate, with its long series of consecrated persons, descend- 
ing with the centuries, and radiating as the Church 
spread, has been the great historical bond of the Chris- 
tian society. We still take for granted and quite under- 
stand that the Christian religion is — with all allowance 
for the great variation in its different bodies — yet one 
and the same religion from the beginning. But if we 
think of what people might have forecasted at its start, 
and before its history had run its course, it might not 
have appeared so natural and probable a thing that it 
would continue as it has done. Its continuous, unbroken 
existence, in its substantial and fundamental character 
unchanged, is a very wonderful fact, simply as a phenom- 
enon. We have not, it is true, much to boast of in the 
matter of unity ; but, considering the great and constant 
forces always at work against it, what we have is remark- 
able enough: we believe in the Holy Catholic Church; 
our hearts thrill at the great name of Christendom ; the 
desire for unity, if it were but possible, is the longing of 
the best men in their best moments. And as a direct and 
immediate influence, nothing has so contributed to this 
sense of fundamental continuity and oneness as the con- 
tinuous, ever-present Episcopate. Along its threads and 
net-work the influences have travelled which have kept up 
this feeling. Along its lines the Church has organized 
itself, and its main history has run. Other organizations 
have, more or less successfully, kept up Christianity, but 
they date from particular times, and belong to particular 

1 From Notes of a Sermon preached by the Rev. R. W. 
Church, M. A., in Westminster Abbey, at the Consecration of 
the Bishop of Salisbury, October 28th, 1869. 



232 APPENDIX. 

places, or are the fruit of special circumstances. Only 
this has been everywhere where Christianity has been. 
Only this belongs peculiarly to Christianity, and has trav- 
elled round the world with the Creed and the Bible. A 
Bishop is a representative person, and he represents much 
more than any local authority : he gathers up into him- 
self a whole history ; he speaks of a past, speaks of a great 
company of others like himself, and of widely extended 
relations ; he is the sign of that which began with the be- 
ginning, and which never expires — of a line which never 
wants a man to represent it. In his marked and conspic- 
uous office, essentially the same in idea all along, reach- 
ing through different times and widely separated societies, 
speaking ever of an ancient truth, and of its disciples be- 
ing one, he was a token, even to those who do not accept 
his office, of the power of that great cause in which all 
Christians are interested, of the spread and hold of the 
faith, that as they have been, so they are ; he could not 
be where he is but for the victory and power of Christian- 
ity ; he symbolizes its one purpose and one call. Wherever 
Episcopacy has been, if now extinguished, it has left its 
monuments and memorials. Often abused, often disbe- 
lieved in, sometimes sunk in desperate scandal, it had the 
power of recovery, of persevering and returning to its 
type; and it was as impossible to imagine it stopping, 
come what might, as it was impossible to think of Chris- 
tianity coming to an end. These ancient lines of Bish- 
ops, representing an authority whose first steps are lost — 
not springing from the State, though it might be in every 
possible degree affected and controlled by it — not spring- 
ing from the congregation — not springing from private 
theories or reforms or needs — carried home to the pub- 
lic mind, as a matter of manifest fact, that men were 
living and had been for ages in a great public religious 
society, distinct from all other associations of men, as im- 
personal as the only thing like it on earth, the State — 



APPENDIX. 233 

which might at times reflect individual minds, or the ten- 
dencies of a period, but which was on the whole and in 
the long run too vast, too open, too manifold, to be the 
reflection any more than the work of any man, or any 
party, or any age. 

"In the next place, the Episcopate was a bond not 
only in outward aspect, but in faith and purpose and 
idea. The Episcopate represented the Christianity of 
history; it represented, further, the Christianity of the 
general Church, as distinguished from the special views 
or opinions of particular parties or schools in it Those 
long lines tied together the Christian body in time ; 
they were scarcely less a bond connecting the infinite 
moral and religious differences which there must always 
be in the body of the Church. The Bishop's office em- 
bodied and protected the large public idea of religion, 
the common understanding and belief, which all recog- 
nized as such, even if they differed from them. In relig- 
ion, as in morality and politics, there is around what is 
individual and personal, and wider than all special bodies 
of opinion, an atmosphere in which all live, a communis 
sensus of elementary accepted truths, vague perhaps, and 
seemingly commonplace, and of inferior interest to each 
man's special views, yet the condition and basis of all. 
It is, of course, impossible to overestimate the great part 
played by individual and independent action ; individual 
zeal for good and hatred of evil, individual charity and 
love of truth; often troublesome, alarming, dangerous, 
yet with mistakes and with successes testifying to and ful- 
filling the great law of improvement, without which all 
good would perish. All who are in earnest must, of 
course, see much to condemn, and much with which they 
can have no sympathy, in many others who are equally in 
earnest. But we must be blind if we refuse to see in 
great outbursts and movements of the individual and pri- 
vate spirit, which we perhaps each of us thoroughly dis- 



234 APPENDIX. 

like from our several points of view, — say, in Monasti- 
cism, in the school theology, in the mendicant orders, in 
Puritanism, in the various phases of Nonconformity, in 
the Company of Jesus, in the noble but vain revolt of 
Jansenism, — much which the world could ill afford to be 
without. It is difficult to say how much we all owe to 
every one of these movements, in which men, counting no 
cost and desiring for themselves no retreat, have given 
themselves to fulfill some great end, which they, and they 
alone at first, saw and aimed at. But these great private 
movements could not fill the compass of human nature. 
They were partial; and further, they tended to destroy 
all that they could not assimilate or subdue. Monastic 
cism and Puritanism would each, if they had had their 
way, have broken up the Church in the attempt to cleanse 
it. There is something wider — an ideal of Christian 
life, a tone of Christian sentiment, a Christian harmony 
of gifts and powers, a great simple Christian faith, which 
they could not conceive or reproduce. And of this larger, 
more generous, yet humbler religious spirit, the Episcopal 
office was the natural head and bond and symbol. The 
Bishop was the mouthpiece of a theology which was not 
that of an order or school, and of which the language was 
the possession and inheritance of all Christian people, not 
the technical phraseology of some of them. The great 
creed, so simple in words, so overwhelming in meaning, 
of which he was the guardian, belonged at once to cate- 
chumens and divines, to the child's bedside prayer and to 
the loftiest worship. Whatever he might be personally, 
in his office he belonged to the public ; his office was the 
expression of public belief, public thought, public feeling : 
private opinion had its range within these limits, and 
when it became aggressive, as in Monasticism or Puritan- 
ism, found in that office its natural counterpoise and 
check. The worship over which he presided was old, and 
it was for all men ; it spoke in Collects, Psalms, and litur- 



APPENDIX. 235 

gical and sacramental forms, which have been in the 
Church for ages, and of which for the most part no one 
knows the author; it suited alike the aspiring and the 
homely ; it was a comfort and shelter for those who loved 
what is quiet and unpretending, and it kindled and ex- 
pressed the thoughts of those deeper minds under whose 
activity old things become new. The Bishop's functions 
were of public interest and concern : in Confirmation, 
old and young looked to his laying on of hands as an 
occasion of deep interest; in Ordination, learned and 
unlearned gained or lost by the clergy whom he commis- 
sioned and governed. In all that he did and spoke offi- 
cially, the idea was uppermost of what was of common 
interest to all, of what was not of to-day or yesterday, but 
was born with man or was coeval with Christianity. 
Others might have deeper things to say : he was there to 
remind Christians of that one great society which was 
meant to embrace us all ; of the value of what was com- 
mon and public and customary ; to bind together old and 
new, weak and strong ; to witness, amid the restlessness 
and activity of individual efforts, for something which, 
with less show, wears better and lasts longer ; something 
public and common, which requires to be filled up and 
animated by private conviction and energy, but without 
which everything private runs the risk of becoming one- 
sided in idea and narrow in sympathy, and, at last, poor 
in heart. Such an institution can bear the test of his- 
tory. Its broad results are before the world : the world 
can see and judge whether it has been in vain, and whether 
it is not doing still what it was doing centuries ago. If 
only it had done what it has done, in keeping the Church 
together, and in guarding at once Catholic faith and 
Christian freedom, it would have justified its place." 



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